


The Wonders of Being Human

by Noon_art



Category: Chinese Actor RPF, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst and Humor, Deeply romantic but also sometimes filthy, Demon Sex, Demon Wang Yi Bo, Dual Demonic Cultivation, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Fanart, Fanfiction, God Xiao Zhan, Idiots in Love, M/M, Rimming, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Self-Lubrication, Sex Toys, Subspace, Thinking off, Top Wang Yi Bo/Bottom Xiao Zhan | Sean, bts dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28904970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noon_art/pseuds/Noon_art
Summary: Two cursed immortals, reborn as humans, are given their spiritual powers back for one day. The intention is they will duel to the absolute death so that one may recover their immortality and break the never-ending rebirth curse.They are given this opportunity every lifetime. And every lifetime they choose instead to live and eventually die together as mortals.They have been merchants, silk farmers, explorers, scribes, soldiers, warlords, prostitutes, slaves and a dozen other identities. The one thing that never changes is that they find one another and resume their almost two-thousand-year love story.The demon lord now called Wang Yibo has no intention of fighting Xiao Zhan, the once god of inspiration. Why would he? Their current lives as idols are possibly the best they’ve ever had.  They just need to survive this day so they can live out their years together.But this time around, both the Upper Kingdom and the Underworld have plans of their own.A modern-xianxia spin on Yizhan
Relationships: Wang Yi Bo/Xiao Zhan | Sean
Comments: 47
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

The man stands in the middle of an empty field approaching midnight, alone. He wears designer motorcycle leathers and a resting frown. His bike is parked near the mouth of the dirt path he took from the highway. Wang Yibo has never driven this trail, but it is eternally committed to his lizard brain, like magnetic migration patterns in birds.

The January night is clear and the moon is halved. Diamond frost clings to every blade of grass, every leaf, this side of Beijing.

All save those in this field. Winter never settles in this sacred place. There’s promise of snow on the wind and a proposal of blood.

Even though Yibo has never stood in this field, he knows it always smells faintly metallic. He also knows the grass never grows longer than two inches. Not ever. Not in fifteen hundred years.

He sits, stretches his legs out in front of him, and waits. Absently, he fiddles with the ring on his left hand. The mobile service is surprisingly good, good enough to check his socials and emails. There’s a script waiting in his inbox that he doesn’t really want to read, and apparently he’s trending for topping another end-of-year list.

Considering the year, this fickle approval means less to him than ever before. And he’s never been overly concerned with the court of public opinion.

Not that he’s judging. People live, die and ascend on the back of public opinion. Some are tormented and bled for months by invisible attackers wearing virtual masks and wielding memes; some are physically ripped apart by slathering mobs full of toxic resentment.

Sometimes they’re the same soul.

Down the path, a twig snaps: a raven croaks and takes flight.

_He’s here._

He emerges from the path the same way every time: hesitant, bowing his head to avoid a spruce branch, his large too-bright eyes tracking the world, tension creeping his shoulders toward his ears.

The last time Yibo saw this man in the flesh, he was awash in the fiery red glow of thousands of ride-or-die parishioners. He rewarded this incense burning with _that voice_ – the one that always gives Yibo ASMR, delicate frissons that begin at the crown of his head and glitter down his spine to pool at his base.

This Xiao Zhan is a patchwork of old photos of himself: an oversized Canada Goose parka, skinny black jeans, a baby blue fox sweatshirt, leather boots, gold-framed glasses and a beanie that hides most of his spiky anime hair, save a tuft at the front that is almost long enough to lay flat. He looks ten years younger than he did those weeks ago.

The last time they met like this, in this sacred place, Xiao Zhan (who wasn’t then named Xiao Zhan) wore army fatigues. The time before that: a grey changshan. He’s worn silk, linen, cotton, in tan, yellow, blue, white and blood red. Sometimes he’s dripping in gold and jewels; sometimes he arrives barefooted. He usually has long inky hair trussed up according to the aesthetic whims of the dynasty, but sometimes he invites comparisons to a hedgehog.

He’s always heartbreakingly beautiful. Such is the lot of the children of heaven.

When their eyes meet, Xiao Zhan pauses, breaks into a soft smile. Yibo mirrors him. He couldn’t stop himself if he tried: he’s been an unabashed simp for this man for almost two thousand years. All his enemies in the three realms know it and bank on it. Hell, millions of humans know it from watching their interactions on screen.

Being that seen, that obvious: it used to bother him. But post-Awakening, he just thinks it’s funny.

Once upon a time, he commanded legions. Now people draw cutesy cartoons depicting him as a pig infatuated with a rabbit. Such is humanity.

It takes Xiao Zhan ten steps to broach the gap; it would take most mortal men twenty. Xiao Zhan still has a divine gait.

His head eclipses the moon when he says, “Wow. Another effortlessly handsome look from peerless style icon Wang Yibo.”

Yibo snorts, his smile deepening. “Don’t diss my stylists: they put a _lot_ of effort into my looks.”

“Ah ah, of course they do. My apologies to your team – they do such a good job I forget you’re not actually _that_ handsome without them.” Xiao Zhan’s teasing grin breaks as he sidesteps Yibo’s half-hearted swipe.

“You’ve seen me a hundred thousand days without my stylists. Do I really need them to be handsome?”

Xiao Zhan purses his lips and shakes his head. His voice is soft. “You know you don’t need anyone for that.”

“Except you. So you can tell me I’m handsome.”

“Very true. You always need that.” He sits, crossing his long legs under him, the parka puffing up around his hips like a beanbag chair. Something heavy clinks against a rock, and Xiao Zhan pulls a metal thermos out of his pocket.

“Did you seriously bring a hot drink to this thing?”

“It’s just tea. You’re riveting company, Lao Wang, but you don’t replace caffeine. It also kept my hands warm on the walk.”

“I can keep your hands warm, Zhan-ge.”

Except he can’t: they still can’t touch. They haven’t been able to touch one another without agonising spiritual feedback in a year. Not since they awakened.

But Xiao Zhan plays along. His eyes flash and dip, his smile demure. “Bo-ge, if you have my hands, how will I drink my tea?”

“Devil take your stupid tea.”

“He usually does,” Xiao Zhan jokes with that beatific smile – the one that brought a prince of the underworld to his knees (and continues to do so).

Yibo levels a firm stare. “Did you eat?”

“I was running late.” So that’s a ‘no’. “My flight was delayed and I needed to shower and change. But I couldn’t make any decisions. . . there’s no dress code for something like this. And, actually, I’m regretting my choice as this energy array is much warmer than I remember.” He shrugs off his parka, baring his throat in a way so nostalgic to Yibo. All he needs is a little portable fan and a red ribbon.

In every lifetime, Xiao Zhan has run hot. It’s the divine light in his blood.

Not only that, the power of this place, triggered by their combined presence, is beginning to boil up. Yibo can feel it collecting in his latent core – the one he cultivated into a blistering star by defeating and consuming ill-fated Daoists in the ancient world. He expects Xiao Zhan feels similarly, even if their original refinement methods had been diametrically opposed.

Except in the end, of course, when they spent more time dual cultivating than following their individual paths. 

Yibo grabs a sack from the saddlebag on his bike and pulls out one of the slightly cold Chengdu-style pork buns he picked up from that little place they like. Xiao Zhan suddenly sniffs the air.

“Did you get –“

Yibo tosses the bag underhanded and it plops onto the parka between Xiao Zhan’s knees.

Xiao Zhan unwraps his dinner but hesitates before biting. “Is it sp–“

“No.” Yibo digs into his own sandwich, which has a nice kick. It’s taken him a couple years, but he’s mostly acclimatised to southwestern spice: both in terms of its food and the temperament of its son. 

“’Cause my stomach –“

“-They made it milder for their favourite customer.”

Xiao Zhan smiles sheepishly. “How embarrassing. My stomach’s so weak these days. I’m practically a northerner. Wow. You just inhaled that!”

“I was hungry,” Yibo says with a mouth full of fire.

“Ah. . .Did I keep you waiting? Sorry.”

“You didn’t. I was early.” Yibo crumples up the wrapper and goes to toss it toward his bike. Xiao Zhan puts his hand out.

“Here. I’ll put it in my coat pocket so we don’t forget.”

Yibo chucks it at him and Xiao Zhan manages to catch it against his chest. He tucks the litter into the side pocket of his parka before he returns to eating, taking tiny bites that Yibo hates. The nibbles seem cute, but Yibo really just wants to shove the bun down his gullet. He wants Xiao Zhan to enjoy his food without thinking about his waistline for once. It’s exhausting. It’s a fucking sandwich; the thing’s already portion controlled.

Still. This is nice. They haven't sat together for a meal in awhile.

“I like that colour.” Yibo gestures to Xiao Zhan’s hoodie.

“This colour always reminds me of Lan. . . your costumes in A-ling.”

“Five incarnations ago you wore that colour.”

“Did I?” Xiao Zhan says with a full mouth. He eats half the bun and wraps the rest up, tucking it into the pocket.

Yibo ignores that so he can stay on point. “When you were a scholar and you lived with my family.”

“Ah, you’re right! Then you seduced me and your parents threw me out in disgrace and I became a beggar.” He leans back on his elbows and quirks an eyebrow.

Yibo smirks. “For a _month_.”

“The month was January. I lost a toe.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. But I rescued you, didn’t I? I bought us a house. I forged the world’s best reference letter and got you a position in the government.”

“Yes yes yes, you used all the skills I taught you and became a criminal mastermind.”

“I just wanted to make my hot teacher proud.”

Xiao Zhan sighs and shakes his head. “You’re too much, Lao Wang. Always have been.”

“Too much or the perfect amount?”

Xiao Zhan concedes. “Too much to resist.”

It’s always been like this. Yibo as the pursuer; Xiao Zhan, the pursued. There was a time when he resented Xiao Zhan for this, for never chasing him. But the truth was, he never gave the man the chance, not in all their shared lifetimes. The moment Yibo saw one of Xiao Zhan’s incarnations, he knew what he wanted and acted upon that desire, no matter the consequences. Xiao Zhan’s more thoughtful, calculating temperament put him at a disadvantage when it came to such banzai! romancing.

Yibo has long embraced his role as hunter, especially knowing that, if he ever waited for Xiao Zhan to make the first move they might be sharing their first kisses grey-haired. And that was if they started out roughly the same age and found one another when young. Sometimes they didn’t. This time, fate was kind: less than six years difference. That was nothing. Once, Xiao Zhan was a great-grandfather and Yibo, a student.

Another time Yibo was married and he and his wife adopted orphaned Xiao Zhan as a baby. That one was especially difficult when they awakened twenty years later and Yibo was forced to remember the countless past lives he spent body worshipping the man he raised as his son.

“What are you thinking about?”

Yibo coughs. “Motorcycles.”

Xiao Zhan makes a noise in his throat. “What’re you really thinking about?”

“That lifetime when I adopted you.”

“Hah. Shit. Don’t think too hard.”

“What’re you thinking about?”

Xiao Zhan laughs. “That lifetime when I hid in your harem. It sounds so ridiculous when you say it out loud, like a bad idol drama, but that was actually a fun life until your general murdered us in bed.”

“Wow, yeah. That was a greatest hit for sure.”

“Also, remember when we were beekeepers? Ah, I got to relive that one recently. We lived in the south – Guangdong, I think? And we had that strange little garden that would only grow white radish on one side and snake beans on the other. It took nothing else. We raised chickens and pigs. Oh, and the mushroom shed! Wah, we ate so well. We were both fat by the end. We lived to be pretty old. What else. . . When you were a silk farmer and I was a dye maker? I remembered that last week. We travelled to India to find new pigments. That was an adventure. You left your family and kid, though. We’ve both abandoned so many people for each other over these lives. Oh, and when I was a warlord? I can’t believe how many people I had killed to keep our secrets. Ai, we’ve made some mistakes. . .”

Xiao Zhan draws his knees up to rest his cheek on them. Sometimes he has the strangest childlike mannerisms. It’s one of the things that put Yibo at ease years ago, back when they were just oblivious mortals dancing around their mutual attraction. This capable, grown-ass man who could cook, public speak, squat his bandmember, and level an authoritative, withering glare like no one else, was secretly a mess who became a complete baby for those he trusted.

And he trusted Yibo.

Xiao Zhan is staring at him softly.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Xiao Zhan drops his voice to match Yibo’s pitch.

“You’re looking at me.”

Xiao Zhan rolls his eyes and tosses him a flirty smile. “What’s wrong with me looking at you? It’s been so long since I saw you without a screen between us. Can’t you let me stare at you awhile?”

Yibo snorts but is secretly pleased. It takes all his willpower not to beam out his happiness.

Xiao Zhan’s eyes reflexively crinkle and Yibo realises said willpower has already failed him. Fuck it. He grins.

At what point over the course of these lifetimes did he become a sap?

“Have I told you lately that I’m proud of you?”

Right. He fell for a literal muse. Mystery solved.

“You could afford to say it more.”

“Psh. You’re such a narcissist. That never changes.”

“Never will. Praise me, Zhan-ge. Tell me how amazing I am.”

“So amazing, Lao Wang,” he deadpans.

Yibo broadens his grin obnoxiously.

Xiao Zhan hollers, “so amazing, Lao Wang!”

Yibo kicks at him, forgetting where they are, when they are, who they are. Upon contact, electricity crackles between them, surging up his legs to explode painfully inside his ribcage, stealing his breath, stopping his heart for a second. He feels as though he’s floating, like he still has wings.

He thumps his chest and his pulse thrums back to life, flickering off beat at the base of his throat until it settles into proper rhythm.

“Wow. Sorry.”

Xiao Zhan is breathing heavily, his hand resting on his sternum. Moisture beads on his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, but he offers a comforting smile through the pain. “You really are amazing, Yibo.”

“Amazingly stupid.” He watches Xiao Zhan closely, afraid he’ll agree. It’s one thing for Yibo to call himself out; another thing entirely if Xiao Zhan agrees with him.

Xiao Zhan shakes his head, fixing his beanie. “Wasn’t too bad that time, right? Energy field’s weakened compared to before. What was I saying, again? Right. I’m still so proud of you – maybe a little less since you just tried to kill me. You’ve accomplished so much this year. So much. . . uncompromising artistry that is quintessentially you. Even though the world was spinning out of control, you pushed forward on a clear path and gave people comfort. And your charity work was so impressive, so important. Huh, especially considering you discovered you’re actually a demon lord who usually doesn’t care about such things. Ah! In other news, I’m also proud you haven’t killed anyone in this lifetime.”

“ _Yet_.”

Xiao Zhan's eyes widen. Somehow, in all the banter, Yibo's forgotten what day it is.

He didn't mean it that way, but the unsaid hangs between them.

Effortlessly, Xiao Zhan sweeps away the tension with a practiced smile. “Don’t even joke. ‘Wang Yibo’ brings out your inherent kindness. And you like this life too much to jeopardise it.”

He hasn’t thought about it like that, but it’s probably true. “Life is definitely easier when you’re rich and can do whatever you want. I don’t want to end this life anytime soon.”

“I’m afraid of what the next one will be like. We won’t get two good lives in a row. We’ll end up cleaning radioactive waste or be cultivated for soylent greens. I also don’t want to be a prostitute again.”

“We were good prostitutes, though. We got a lot of practise together.”

“I was a prostitute twice, Lao Wang! The first time without you was horrible. I died young and sad.”

Right. Shit. He would’ve had to relive that recently, just like Yibo had to relive his past lives. 

A year of Awakening was always deeply painful and confusing, waves of old memories flooding the senses, dreamlike, nightmarish, hallucinatory, but so palpable. There were even times memories had come crashing on him when he was working. It happened a couple of times on Tian Tian Xiang Shang. There was one shooting where the awakened memories were so overwhelming he was sick with it on stage.

That was the day he re-lived his own first death. The sensation of being run through by the swords of the four martial masters and drowning slowly in his own blood as the Master of Cloud Chamber bound him with the resurrection curse.

If the awakening experience wasn’t bad enough, they had the mortal pandemic to contend with and Xiao Zhan’s ongoing cyber-assault.

Yibo had a good year career-wise, despite it all. He dove into his job so he didn’t combust with how frustrated he was, how impotent he felt watching people humiliate the person he loved.

He doesn't feel guilty about his success. But he has regrets.

There were many days of cold fury, when memories of his first life came roiling back to him, and he remembered the power he once wielded. The supremacy to lay waste to all these insipid creatures and their equally petty conflicts. The authority to protect the one he loved from any and all who might do him harm.

And he could have that power again, the Awakening reminded him. He could have his immortality back. He could have his princedom, command the demonic armies of the underworld, hold dominion over millions of ghosts. He could have his magic returned to him. He could break this painful cycle of rebirth and suffering.

He could have Xiao Zhan painlessly smile again.

Of course, to do this . . .

Impossible.

He suspects many of Xiao Zhan’s memories are painful. The man says he’s unlucky, but that’s not true. It’s because heaven wants him back, so they try to make his earthly life miserable. They hope that, come the next opportunity, he will do his duty and return to them.

Of course, the last thing the princes of the underworld want is Yibo back, so they torture Xiao Zhan as well, hoping for the same result.

Yibo doesn’t blame his rivals. If by some miracle he ever did return, he’d take them all down without a second thought. They all know it. Even now, he occasionally fantasizes about returning to the underworld in the most dramatic entrance possible. He would kick down the hundred-foot iron doors to the demon king’s throne room, his vantablack shadow subsuming the chamber, swallowing all light, leeching the mitochondrial energy from every living creature, then exploding that power back at the Black Court, burning every ghost to wisps. Then he’d draw his guandao and cleave through the mass of minions, their blood painting crisscrossed lines across the king’s chest.

Actually, that would be a bomb music video. It’d get censored in China, but maybe in Korea or overseas. He should write that down.

“What’re you smirking about?”

“. . .Nothing.”

“Wang Yibo, you look legitimately demonic right now.” Xiao Zhan cocks his head and stretches out one leg. His foot comes dangerously close – Yibo can feel the spark on his kneecap.

Yibo sniggers. “Just thinking about how many pictures there are online of your bare feet.”

Xiao Zhan’s cheeks darken. “You’re so funny, Lao Wang.”

It’s too easy to tease him. Every incarnation. It’s one of Yibo’s favourite things to do. Tied for first place with being teased _by_ this entity.

“I . . . want to touch you so badly.”

Yibo’s smile melts. He swallows and nods.

Soon.

“I can’t believe it’s been a year since . . . that night.”

Contrary to what the world speculates, they’ve only really been _together together_ once in an intentional way. Everything before that was a mess and everything since has been video calls and wifi-compliant toys. But their first purposeful time was a concerted decision the night of last year’s Tencent Awards after almost two years of . . . whatever the hell it was they were doing.

They started fooling around early, shortly after principal photography on Chen Qing Ling began. At first it was an experiment they came up with after one of their ‘chemistry sessions’ with their acting teacher. They always walked away from the experiences feeling vulnerable, nerves raw, insecurities laid bare. 

Also: horny.

She would get them to tell one another their fears while sitting knee to knee, or holding each other’s wrists, looking into one another’s’ eyes. It seemed innocent, but it was a floodgate opening. After that, Yibo felt like there were magnets in his fingers, negatives drawn toward the positive charge of his co-star. Every time he hit Xiao Zhan, handled him, trapped him, grabbed his throat, the tension simultaneously released and escalated. People started calling him out on his staring, but he couldn’t help it: he was addicted. For him, just looking at Xiao Zhan was a syringe of oxytocin punched straight to his brain.

And it wasn’t one-sided. Xiao Zhan was a flirtatious monster and Yibo feels vindicated that some of the most shameless examples of that have been leaked. The man deserves to be exposed.

Their entanglement intensified until they were tumbling into Yibo’s room on the regular, lazily kissing and grinding until they passed out entwined and snoring.

They only talked about it once, confessing they’d both fooled around a little with their respective band members (although not with the ones they guessed). Xiao Zhan, with his big brain, justified it as something people do in ‘homosocial environments’. Yibo agreed, since it sounded legit, but mostly because he wanted to. Because, of course, they were straight: they both liked and slept with women. It just so happened they also liked and screwed around with each other. The CQL experience was just bending them a bit, right?

But this was natural. It was character bleed. They were joking around. It was good for the show. It was good for them because they worked sixteen hour days and deserved an occasional therapeutic hand job from someone who could sympathise.

Such bullshit.

Filming complete, they separated. No drama. They were friends. Just good friends. Very good friends. Life was too busy. There were too many distractions, too many people vying for finite time and attention. They texted memes and flirted, but nothing real. Real was too real out in the world, outside the bubble of the drama. But in those lonely hotel rooms with the television flickering, it was always Xiao Zhan Yibo thought about when he jerked himself to sleep.

When they met for the press blitz, they started up again. The cameras loved their attraction. They loved it. But it was still innocent. Everyone around them swore it was innocent. And of course, it was. Because love is the paragon of innocence. Calling it anything less is just cynicism.

Nanjing. In a hotel room, the hands of the clock passing through dawn, things changed. They were supposed to sleep after their red-eyes. Missing one another, they shared a bed. They probably shouldn’t have since Xiao Zhan was sick, downing flu medication every couple hours and sucking on lozenges. He tasted like eucalyptus that night. But they couldn’t sleep. Yibo could barely breathe until he got his hands on Xiao Zhan’s feverish skin and his fingers refused to settle: they had to get reacquainted with every part of him.

As he roamed, Xiao Zhan rasped about every single thing that had happened to him since the last time they met. And in every breath, Yibo heard the unsaid: ‘I was at a photoshoot in Milan, _and I wished you were there_ , ‘at this interview, I got trapped in my thoughts _and needed you to jump in and save me from myself_ ’’, ‘at the airport I forgot my travel pillow, _and I wanted your shoulder to sleep on in-flight’_.

This string of unspoken confessions broke something in Yibo. He yanked Xiao Zhan’s jeans down his legs, hiked those runner’s thighs over his shoulders, and went down on him as thought he’d done it a hundred times. He did this before awakening to the fact that he’d actually done it _hundreds of_ _thousands_ of times for this soul.

Despite knowing this now, he still takes great pleasure in remembering how he unravelled his Zhan-ge that night; how Xiao Zhan cursed him and begged; how his name sounded like a song when it fell out Xiao Zhan’s mouth; how Xiao Zhan’s thighs tightened around Yibo’s neck and choked him just a little as Yibo brought him to the edge.

Xiao Zhan came loudly and violently for him, collapsing, wet-eyed and stunned. And when Yibo swallowed him down, the taste brought on the strangest sense of déjà vu.

The afterglow was short-lived. Xiao Zhan quietly excused himself to go to the washroom, pulling up his jeans as he all but sprinted across the room and locked himself on the other side of the door.

Something about the way he fled formed a pit in Yibo’s stomach. His intense high plummeted, and the spunk in his mouth oxidized bitter. He downed a drink from the minifridge and felt small.

Xiao Zhan was in the toilet for what seemed like forever. By the time that door opened and he stepped out, Yibo’s erection and confidence were flagging.

His face was red and he couldn’t meet Yibo’s eyes. “Eh, sorry.”

“Did you fall in the toilet?” That was something Yibo’s father used to say when he took too long on the can.

“. . .Right. Yeah, for that too.” He rubbed his neck and laughed humourlessly. “God, why am I so fucking awkward? Ah, Lao Wang, your Zhan-ge is such a loser. Just ignore him.”

Something clicked into place. Having spent time with Xiao Zhan in his valleys, he could recognise certain signs. “What’re you even talking about?”

Xiao Zhan’s face soured. “Don’t make me say it.”

“I honestly don’t know what this is.”

His eyes bugged out. “Yi- _bo_!”

“Xiao _Zhan_!” Yibo threw his tone back in his face.

“We were. . . just fooling around and I blew my load down your throat without asking, no condom. And on the day of our concert! While I’m sick! I just. . . lost my mind. That wasn’t me – I’ve never made those sounds. I don’t . . . shit, _moan_ like that. I bet everyone in a two mile radius heard me.”

Smirk. “Two miles? C’mon Zhan-ge, you’re loud but you weren’t mic’ed. Be humble.” Also, Yibo had heard him make every single one of those sounds before. Maybe not in this same context, but they were definitely part of his repertoire.

“That was really embarrassing. I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable, Yibo. I can make you some tea. You should take ginger and echinacea-”

“-Are you stupid?”

Xiao Zhan blinked.

“One: stop worrying about my voice. I’m singing along with the recording. Worry about your own virtuous self live-singing when you’re so sick you can barely stand. Two: are you seriously apologising for cumming? I was sucking you off: that’s kind of the point.”

“Yibo, it’s not . . .”

“-Or are you apologising for being into it? If that’s what this is: _don’t_. ‘Cause that was the hottest shit I’ve ever heard. I hope this hotel is secretly filming us and they release our sex tape so I can watch it and make your noises my ringtone –“

“Don’t even joke about that!”

“Then stop freaking out and tell me what’s really going on.”

Xiao Zhan sat heavily beside him, eyes glassy with fever, his adam’s apple bobbing as he worked out the words. “This casual fooling around with you. I. . . I can’t do it. It hurts my heart. I want too much and it’s not fair to you and I’m just going to humiliate myself again if I keep pretending. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I thought I . . . I was straight, but maybe I’m not? And I don’t know what to do about that and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me. But I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”

Yibo wasn’t sure he could believe his ears or Xiao Zhan’s flu-addled mouth. “. . . Are you saying you want me? That you feel things for me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry. I just . . . dumped all this . . . stuff on you. Oh my god, where are my words today? Everything is coming out wrong. Including me, hah. Ah, Yibo, if you don’t want to be near me, then I understand. I hope you’re still comfortable singing with me tomorrow-“

“-Wow. Yeah, you are really stupid.”

“Okay okay. You don’t have to insult-“

“-Zhan-ge, I’ve told you I’m in love with you like twenty fucking times. On camera even. There are fan sites that play it on loop. This is the stupidest crisis you’ve ever had. Stop being so neurotic and help me with my boner. I’d like to get some sleep before rehearsal.”

With that, he shucked off his boxers and leapt into bed.

Wang Yibo was usually a pretty confident person, although not as much as post-Awakening. Sure, he had a hard time opening up to people, or feeling comfortable in new social situations, but that was as much on the world as it was on him. But when Xiao Zhan got like this, Yibo became a different person. Anyone who upset Xiao Zhan would get theirs – even when it was Xiao Zhan upsetting himself.

The man in question wiped at his eye. “Um?”

“You gonna repay the favour or are you a pillow prince?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s fine if you’re a lazy lay, gege. I don’t mind doing all the work. You’re old, after all. The elderly are entitled to their rest.”

For that he got bared teeth, a few choice curses, and a mind-blowing orgasm that left him with weak knees and a lazy smile he wouldn’t shake all day. They curled up together and slept for a couple of hours. 

But they had so little time. They promised they’d talk that night after the concert, but Xiao Zhan collapsed in bed the second they returned to the hotel, his flu having grown worse throughout the day. His assistant woke him up to make him choke down some ibuprofen and sports drink before putting him to bed. Yibo slept alone that night, in the bed technically assigned to Xiao Zhan.

The next day they said goodbye to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Yibo held it together – he’d moved on from Lan Wangji, the things he most loved about the character now belonged to him. But Xiao Zhan was an emotional, feverish wreck and still had bloodshot eyes when he left for the airport. He had to fly out to finish filming Oath of Love and the last segments of Our Song. Yibo himself began shooting Legend of Fei in Hengdian and had several endorsement shoots peppered throughout the next months. Not to mention he had to get to the track and back to regular dance training.

Their new relationship sat firmly in text and video chat until Tencent. For weeks they chatted around the night they’d have, hinting at their desires, their fears, their expectations.

When it finally came, it was nothing like how they planned.

A week later, the Awakening began.

That was the way it worked. They unknowingly crossed an emotional threshold, feeling safe and secure and hopeful about the future, and the Awakening activated.

It would take a year for them to remember everything – the human brain couldn’t handle such a deluge. But at activation, Yibo knew enough.

He knew what he was. He knew why they’d been cursed. He knew who Xiao Zhan was to him. He knew they’d performed this dance countless times.

The moment he gathered his wits, he texted one word to Xiao Zhan: Xiao Zhan’s true name.

An hour later, he was staring at his own ancient name captured in a bubble on a small crystal screen in sans serif.

He caught a night flight to Beijing. 

Yibo all but busted down Xiao Zhan’s door to get to him. At that time, he only had snippets of old lives, jumbled fragments with no narrative string. All he knew for certain was that he had to get his hands on Xiao Zhan: he needed Xiao Zhan’s hands on him. They needed to be joined at every junction possible, inside one another in every possible configuration. He needed Xiao Zhan to say his new name – _Wang Yibo Wang Yibo_ – a hundred times, and then on the hundred and first time slip up and cry out his true name, reminding the underworld of Yibo’s continued influence on this world.

He needed to make Xiao Zhan laugh, and hear that laughter chime through the heavens like biazhong. Anything to remind the immortals in the upper realm that Xiao Zhan left them for _him_ and he didn’t regret it, no matter what hardships those petty fucks threw at them.

Four a.m. Xiao Zhan’s loft was unlocked for him. As he burst through the door, the smell of sweet taro buns bowled him over, and that scent kick-started a body memory of two mid-century army veterans: one who rose through the ranks after the war of resistance, while the other, after losing his leg in the conflict, opened a small bakery specialising in the most delicate, fragrant buns: lotus bean paste, salted yolk, and Yibo’s favourite, taro.

In his last life, Yibo ate one of those buns every morning for twenty years before going to work. He ate so many sweets – too many. He had to take a break from them this lifetime.

There was Xiao Zhan at his kitchen island in an old t-shirt and boxer briefs, placing a batch of golden, egg-washed buns in a basket. He looked up as Yibo surged in.

“I can’t stop baking!” he exclaimed, expression hovering somewhere between panic and delight.

“You smell like home,” Yibo practically growled. “Fuck, Zhan-ge. . .”

Xiao Zhan dropped his baking sheet and took three steps forward. “Yes. Yes please.”

Yibo dumped his bag unceremoniously and closed the gap, reaching for Xiao Zhan as though he were an oasis in the Taklamakan.

As soon as they connected, the spiritual feedback exploded, knocking Yibo twenty feet in the air. He hit a pillar and dropping bonelessly to the ground. In his periphery he saw Xiao Zhan fly the opposite way, colliding with a lamp and tumbling over a side table.

He may’ve passed out, waking up with a loud whoop and a sudden surge of air inflating his burning lungs. His right shoulder was dislocated – he knew this injury well – and his fingers were numb. Shaking his hands to get the blood flowing, he stumbled across the room to the area where Xiao Zhan had been flung.

Xiao Zhan lay atop the broken lamp, the side table toppled onto his legs. His head was flung to the side, blood trickling from his nostril, from a cut at his temple.

For a second, Yibo thought he was dead. He had a vision of a past lifetime where this happened: where the first time they touched after awakening the energy surge killed Xiao Zhan. They’d had only a few months together.

But then, Xiao Zhan gasped, coughed and opened his eyes. They locked on to Yibo and immediately curved into crescents.

“Thank fuck.” Yibo exhaled. “I thought you were dead.”

“Eh? Imagining the headlines? Maybe when I die the press’ll finally say nice things about me. Headline: ‘Passable actor and middling singer Xiao Zhan murdered in his home by abundantly talented rival and one-time co-star Wang Yibo.’ Nice right? Our names can be linked even in death. Truly, I would die happy for such kind words.”

“I will kill the next person who even thinks you’re anything less than perfect.”

“Then you will be in jail before I finish this sentence, Wang TianTian.” Xiao Zhan groaned and coughed through a laugh. “Ah, we’re so stupid. Are you okay?”

Yibo exhaled. “Yeah, fine.” With grit teeth, he notched himself against a pillar and popped his shoulder back in its socket. He roared with the pain and tried to walk it off.

“Wang Yibo!” Xiao Zhan’s holler echoed in the rafters.

"I’m fine!”

“Liar. But that was. . . so. . . phew. Is it warm in here?”

Yibo stared at the man lying on the ground, nose and mouth smeared with blood, eyes hooded, pupils blown wide in the dim of early morning. In this life, they were idols: actors, performers, models. Their faces were their livelihoods.

But once they were warriors.

Once, they met upon a hill in the underworld, swords and lines drawn. Yibo had wreaked havoc to garner the upper realm’s attention, inflicting cruel and vindictive theatres on Xiao Zhan’s favoured mortals to lure the god of inspiration to his principality. And he came, of course, because he was a symbol of the upper realm’s strength and virtue wrapped in imperial blood-red silk.

Xiao Zhan was there to dole out justice; Yibo just wanted to knock off that long-veiled mili so he could see the man’s face again.

They fought for two days and two nights and both drew blood.

Yibo cut that damned veil to ribbons and stole a kiss.

They duelled nine more times and didn’t fuck for another hundred years.

“Wow.”

“What?”

“I forgot how hot you look wearing your own blood.”

Xiao Zhan tilted his head. “I wore a lot of blood as Wei Wuxian.”

“Not the same. Never looked real before post.”

Xiao Zhan thumbed the blood from his nose and Yibo was suddenly painfully aware of his cock. When that flirty smile appeared, the one he always attributed to Wei Ying but now recognised it from every incarnation, Yibo had need to reach out and wrap his hand around Xiao Zhan’s throat.

He was never quite equipped for that smile as a demon monarch, and had been completely out of his depth as a lovesick twenty-year-old mortal.

“Bo-ge, don’t get too riled up. We can’t touch each other for _a year_.” The bastard didn’t seem too broken up about it in that moment, too intent on teasing and flirting to realise he’d be going out of his own mind soon enough.

“It’s fine, right? The curse is different this time? They think it’s going to drive a wedge between us, but we barely see each other in real life as it is. We’ve been training for this without realising it. Plus, we have technology. We have texting and video calling and app-controlled fuck machines.”

Xiao Zhan bit his lip. “Baby, you should buy two of those.”

“I already did in the DiDi over, and a bunch of other stuff, but I’m gonna cancel the order if you don’t stop talking to me in your fucking Wei Ying voice. Asshole.”

Xiao Zhan lowered his eyes in a teasing, demure smile.

“I’m serious. I’m about to pop my zipper and I have to fly back in an hour.”

“Hm? Well if you do, pop your zipper that is, I have clothes you can borrow. I just did the laundry.”

Yibo grabbed a taro bun from the basket and whipped it at Xiao Zhan, who flinched and took it in the shoulder with a yelp.

“Demon Lord-gege, stop wasting food!” Xiao Zhan hollered between his ridiculous giggles.

“Shut up!” Yibo roared, launching another bun at him and catching him in the forehead.

“Oompf. Okay Lao Wang! You win again. Have mercy.” He stood up gingerly, peeling lamp shrapnel from his skin and clothes, then moved to the kitchen to wash his face.

Yibo had to stuff his hand in his pocket to stop from skimming it along Xiao Zhan’s hip as the man walked by. Xiao Zhan even slowed down to allow for it, expecting some sort of physical touch, his hand raised to reciprocate, before realising it was the exact worst thing for him to do. Flustered, he fetched a broom to sweep up the lamp.

“You’re right about the curse. They won’t Pavlov’s Dog us into abandoning each other this time. We have options. We can weather this together, even apart.” He sighed. “We should’ve talked about our feelings way earlier.”

“Not my fault. I confessed to you like two months into filming.”

“Okay okay okay, let’s not assign blame. A relationship is always a two-way conversation.”

“And _I_ was talking.”

“Yes, I know. You never shut up. You nearly ruined your perfectly-cultivated cool guy image.”

“Again, _your_ fault.”

“Shit, we have the Weibo awards next week. We’ll have to ask to sit apart. Can’t chance it. My team’s suggested multiple times we put some space between us publicly.”

“Yeah, same. Ugh. I fucking hate these stupid award shows.”

“I know, baby.”

“S’gonna be so boring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be. Everything in the world is your fault, Zhan-ge. Stop inspiring mortals to follow their stupid dreams and invent dumb shit.”

“Lao Wang, don’t blame award shows on me. I haven’t been the god of inspiration in fifteen hundred years. Back then I mostly inspired soldiers to do heroic deeds on the battlefield. Award shows are someone else’s fault.”

That night, they sat together at the kitchen island, picking at taro buns and sharing three beer just so they could touch through an intermediary. By the time Yibo had to go, Xiao Zhan’s glow was in full bloom. Yibo took a photo for posterity and his spank bank. Then he left for the airport with half a dozen buns in his bag (for his colleagues) and an empty bottle with Xiao Zhan’s kiss on the mouth. 

Wang Yibo was a twenty-two year old variety performer whose plastic life had been mostly sculpted and scheduled for him. He was also an immortal lord of the underworld who once held dominion over millions of souls and annihilated demons and ghosts at whim.

Attempting to reconcile this duality broke Yibo’s brain for some time. He’s still not quite sure who he is.

Mostly he just knows what he wants.

The Pandemic struck.

Twenty twenty was a mess.

It’s been _a_ _year_.

Which means it’s been _one whole year_.

Now, they’re here. There’s just one obstacle left.

Xiao Zhan spins the lid of his thermos and takes a swig of his tea. Yibo holds out his hand. Rolling his eyes, Xiao Zhan caps the thermos and lobs it to him.

Since Yibo can’t quite pinpoint the exact section of the bottle where Xiao Zhan drank from, he puts his entire mouth over the opening. He stares Xiao Zhan down as he drinks.

“Subtle.”

“When have I ever pretended to be subtle?” Yibo licks a strip up the side of the bottle before capping it. Xiao Zhan distracts from his second-hand embarrassment by pulling off his cap and scratching his scalp.

“Wow. Your hair’s so long,” Yibo marvels. It’s grown so much in the last couple weeks, maybe even in the few days since they video chatted.

“Yeah, it feels weird and won’t do anything I want. I have to use so much product. I’ll be happy when it grows out to a normal length.”

Yibo’s just content it’s long enough to run his fingers through and pull.

Xiao Zhan claps his hands. “Right! What’s the time, Lao Wang? We almost there?”

His body says ‘almost’; his phone says 00:02. “Heaven’s late.”

“Maybe you need to set your watch properly.”

“Who checks their watch, grandpa? My phone says its after midnight.”

“Wang Yibo, who’s the grandpa?” Xiao Zhan shouts. “You’re wearing a damn Rolex!”

“Yeah, but I don’t use it to tell time.” He grins. “It’s just cool.”

“Sometimes I think I was never young.” Xiao Zhan stands. He rolls his shoulders and stretches his arms above his head, yawning.

Yibo follows suit, popping to his feet. “I’m not young – I was a lord of the underworld long before you were born, _human_.”

Xiao Zhan gives him side-eye with a bit of spice. “Maybe I should start making ageist jokes about you then? Hm? See how you like it, _old cow_.”

Yibo chuckles. He will never live down that comment.

The air begins to electrify, tiny motes of light pulsing around their heads. Xiao Zhan smiles and reaches out to touch them and they fizzle like sparkler heads on contact. The ground trembles beneath their feet, although they’re the only entities affected.

It’s time.

Their eyes meet.

Xiao Zhan suddenly looks small and lost. “Yibo, I . . .”

“-Here we go, Zhan-ge. Remember how much -”

The world goes dark.

“-Didi loves you.”

****

If you're an adult, come hang with me on twitter and talk about mxtx or bjyx. No one in rl will do so and they're tired of listening to me sigh wistfully. [Noon on bird app](https://twitter.com/Noon92361356)


	2. Chapter 2

A demon stands on a mountain of bones under a red sky. All around him the desolate, dusty plains stretch further than even his eagle eyes can see.

This was once his dominion. His world. He abandoned it, left it to ruin and rot, along with his immortality and responsibilities.

Ghosts swirl above him in a hurricane of resentment, dumped in this run-down principality as a bardo with no escape, ultimately forgotten.

Even if they blame him, this isn’t his problem. The court of the underworld is just stirring up resentment against him on the off chance he returns and declares war. There’s no other reason to keep souls in this hellscape past the requisite forty-nine days. They’ll corrupt. It looks like many have.

Wang Yibo doesn’t like ghosts. He can feel them wherever he goes, prickling the hair on the back of his neck. They stalk him, because they’ve been told to. When he Awakened, this new knowledge was such a relief. Xiao Zhan doesn’t tease him about keeping the television on anymore.

A ghost breaks from the maelstrom and swirls around him, bleeding energy, its blackened eye sockets full of gold and jewels. It’s like a cat, brushing against his legs, bumping its head against his shoulder, spilling coins and pearl strings at his feet. “ _Lord, have you returned? Will you release us ? Lord, don’t abandon us again!_ ”

Dozens swirl around him, pestering him. _“Lord, help us!” “Lord, save us.”_

He sympathises, but finds himself longing for a mute button.

Spectral insects buzz around his head, and grotesque skeletal animals, sloughing off hide and muscle, crowd his feet. Living shadows mass around him, blocking the sky.

“ _Lord, if he abandons you this time, will we be freed?”_ says one shadow with a silky voice.

 _“Lord, if he stabs his sword through your heart and your essence is atomised and dispersed through the three realms, will we finally be reborn?”_ asks another in a cloying tone.

_“Lord, he’s going to leave you this time.”_

“ _He doesn’t even have to leave: they’ll just steal him back. Heaven is tired of you playing house, Lord,”_ says a skeletal fox, pawing at his shin.

It’s all the same fucking noise every time.

 _“You drew too much attention to yourself this lifetime, Lord,”_ says a tumorous ghost whose head is more goitre than skull. _“They want him back. They want his power over the mortals for themselves. And they’re afraid of you and your human worshippers. Afraid you’ll leverage your influence over the humans against heaven.”_

He raises his eyebrow at that. This is new. Truthfully, it’s not the first time he’s thought about idol culture and how it’s a funhouse mirror of ancient worship. . . Mostly because Xiao Zhan makes that exact comment every third or fourth video call.

They’ve never lived lifetimes like this. Yes, he’s been a prince a couple of times – even Emperor, once. But those were short, bloody, fraught lives. And ruling people, having them worship you as an earthly god out of fear, is different than being an idol. Wang Yibo doesn’t actually have the power to make people idolise him – they do it of their own volition. This is a different sort of relationship. It’s more fickle and he has less agency, but it’s also more potent in a way. Love is more fanatical than fear.

And of course, the same can be said for Xiao Zhan. His worshippers are even more zealous, more protective, and he has started to subtly exercise that influence, as is his divine nature.

_“Release us, Lord, and we’ll worship you.”_

_“We’ll help you take heaven, Lord!”_

“ _We’ll help you steal him back, Lord. Bring us to heaven with you!”_

They’re right, for once. There’s nothing in Cloud Master’s curse prohibiting heaven from spontaneously forgiving Xiao Zhan, or just straight up stealing him, leaving Yibo to endure this cycle on his own. The ground practically gives out under his feet. He needs to get back to the mortal realm.

_“Lord release us!” “Lord, please!” “Lord!”_

Fuck. The ghosts aren’t actually _his_ problem, and he only has one night with his power restored. He’d rather return to the mortal realm and find Xiao Zhan as quickly as possible to alleviate his fears. But he can’t leave these sad-sacks like this. Maybe it’ll help him sleep at night.

His shadow splits and becomes wings, cutting swathes of darkness through the air. As he ascends, that feeling of weightlessness is the first thing he misses about his demonhood. It twinges his nerves, his stomach somersaulting, his eyes tight and hot. Sighing, he speaks: “Come on.”

He leads them across the empty plains of his forgotten princedom, a lone figure followed by a cyclone of ghosts. There was a time when he painstakingly tended this world, choreographing its development and protecting its denizens while they were in his care. By the end, he paid little attention to the politics involved in other underworld kingdoms unless he had to, and didn’t concern himself with the movements of gods or humans.

Until he concerned himself with one.

Being here now, it feels selfish to have abandoned an entire world for what could, arguably, be interpreted as chasing some mortal tail. But that mortal also surprisingly ascended and made life so much more interesting for him.

When Xiao Zhan would come here to duel, Yibo would create things for him, like yellow rapeseed fields, pear groves, waterfalls, even full-blown mountain ranges. From an Art of War standpoint, it was a sound battle strategy, since Xiao Zhan’s sense of direction has always been abysmal and this shifting landscape disoriented him without fail.

But truthfully, these creations were gifts. And no matter how annoyed the god was when he arrived, he softened and begrudgingly showered Yibo with praise – for his creativity, for the execution of his craft. Several times Xiao Zhan left without drawing his sword after a flirtatious-yet-hostile tête-à-tête.

The more the god praised him, the more Yibo wanted to create. And the more he created, the more he wanted Xiao Zhan to praise him for those creations. His world was never more beautiful than when he was warring with the god of inspiration.

It was similar when he found Xiao Zhan in this lifetime. Not at their Chen Qing Ling read-through: not even at Tian Tian Xiang Shang. It was before that, when he was feeling lowest, on the precipice of returning to China permanently due to the conflicts with Korea. He slept in a temporary rental flat near the studio, checking in with management every morning to hear about his future. His Uniq brothers were in Korea and busy without him – they filmed a music video and made him a snowman. He felt like he really was that snowman: come spring he’d be a wash-up.

Most nights, he’d put on a hoodie and cap and go out dancing by himself. He danced with anyone, everyone, but didn’t connect much beyond that. Rarely spoke or made eye contact. He just wanted to get warm and connect to the living world on his terms. Occasionally he took a girl home who recognised him, but without his boys there to drag out his smile, it became too much work to maintain even the bare minimum connection with these temporary characters. He didn’t know who he was anymore and part of him didn’t care.

In the dark, surrounded by ghosts, the loneliness seeped in.

Missing Uniq was what led him to watch reruns of the X Nine teen channel. He couldn’t watch old clips of his own crew – they quickly made him teary - so he found something wholesome of comparable chaos to keep him company in the dark. 

Thinking back, his bias was instantaneous, but he had no idea at the time. His proud nineteen-year-old self would never admit to preferring the awkward, smiling choirboy over the cooler cast members. But he often fell asleep lulled by a Chonqing accent.

If he watched a few clips of the show when he woke up, his day was better. He was less lonely and more hopeful knowing Zhan Zhan and his crew were waiting on his phone in his back pocket. It gave him more energy to think about his future. He felt better about being back in China, about being part of this developing industry, even if it felt like he had to start at square one. He could make an impact. He could mentor, he could help steer it. He talked to his management company about submitting him for more acting roles, more brand ambassadorships. He thought about releasing singles as a solo artist. He made plans to visit his parents.

He made _plans_. He wanted things again.

Then he met them at the studio. He met _him_. And he was much taller than he looked on tv.

They didn’t say one word to one another: didn’t matter. The electricity was generated.

Yibo wanted even more out of his life.

No, he wanted _everything_ out of his life. Yibo wanted the world. And he was going to take it for himself.

Looking back on it, with the newfound privilege of an immortal memory, he saw what that dark period was: the end of childhood. An unsettling time where he moved from the safety of his neatly laid-out previous life to a new era he could define on his own terms.

And meeting Xiao Zhan, however briefly, intensified that need to put away childish things. Not legos or skateboarding: these are simply passions. But childish whims, childish conduct, childish reactions. Other people’s perceptions of his childishness. He wanted to grow up five years in a minute. He wanted to flood Weibo with a hundred new mature photos and proof of career landmarks – edgy songs, sophisticated dances, meaningful films, luxury sponsorships that told everyone he would be a good and stable partner. Only then could he slide into a certain idol’s Wechat with a suave line.

That was his plan.

Then Lan Wangji happened.

During the filming for Chen Qing Ling, he came clean about being a fanboy. They were in his room, Xiao Zhan sitting on the bed watching him pack for a trip. He kept whining about Yibo leaving, so Yibo kicked open a second suitcase and told him to jump in. If he could still fit, Yibo would take him as checked luggage, although Xiao Zhan would have to pay him back for the excess weight fee.

He got three smacks for that and outed as a dimple.

(Incidentally, Xiao Zhan outed himself as a unicorn a couple weeks later when Yibo called him out for _actually_ knowing the words (mostly mispronounced) to a UNIQ song he was mindlessly singing. He copped to it, but the troll will go to his grave maintaining that Li Wenhan is his Uniq bias. Always fucking Wenhan. . .)

 _Anyway_ , he was a dimple, Zhan-ge was a unicorn, and they were both fools. Further proof they were fools: Xiao Zhan willingly hopped in the luggage, because he was competitive and easy to manipulate. Five minutes later Yibo was wheeling a suitcase full of leading man down the hotel corridor. They woke up half the floor with their caterwauling.

Everything was more fun, more creative, more meaningful, more charged with his Zhan-ge.

That’s what it was like in the ancient times then when they duelled too.

_~*~_

"What is _wrong_ with you?” said the god of inspiration as he descended to the underworld, red silk flickering around him, his landing spot cratering the raw earth.

The demon prince had no retort. His upper lip simply curled up as he fastidiously tended his new bamboo forest, growing new stalks one by one.

“You turned all my parishioners in Luoyang into cows and their cows into humans, and now the cows-that-are-humans are planning to eat the humans-that-are-cows!”

That was exactly what he’d done, but hearing it aloud. . . Yibo (not his true name but easier to spell) was overcome with how stupid and inspired his prank was. There was nothing better than hearing that absurdist explanation in that authoritative tone, sniped from behind the veil.

“Thankfully, they’re too dim-witted to figure out opposable thumbs or use human tools.” Xiao Zhan (again, not his true name but true for now) sighed and approached. He leaned against a bamboo stalk, wrapping his arm around it, the hem of his sleeve slipping down his forearm to hang in the crook of his elbow, displaying his delicate wrist, gold filigree bracelet, and the teal veins pulsing just under his skin. Catching unguarded glimpses of skin during their bouts was always a highlight for Yibo but this was a shock. Xiao Zhan usually wore fitted zhong yi under his layers of robes. The god of inspiration was notoriously modest.

“You here to fight about it?” Yibo coughed and grew a new bamboo stalk right beside Xiao Zhan’s leg. It was close enough that it caught the hem of his robe and made it flutter up a few inches before the fabric slipped free.

“Hah, is that why you did it?” The god cocked his head, tilting the hat.

“Why else?”

Xiao Zhan shrugged. “I don’t know. Why do you do any of the mad things you do? Painting my shrines sky blue so birds fly into them? Selling incense sticks laced with goat excrement outside my houses of worship? Provoking my parishioners with these outlandish pranks? At best it’s annoying, at worst: murderous. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re just trying to get my attention and doing it in the most immature way possible.”

“But ‘you know better’.” Yibo grew another stalk beside Xiao Zhan’s other foot.

“Demon Lord, I know I have very little to offer someone of your status. Why would you want my attention? It’s not for my powers, as you have no use for them. But if you were simply hankering for a fight, there are a dozen other gods more skilled in combat than me.”

Yibo grew two more bamboo stalks behind Xiao Zhan, and two more in front, creating a cage of cellulose. He smiled. “Maybe I just like messing with you?”

Xiao Zhan held on to the two bamboo prison bars in front of him. Now both his forearms were naked, that creamy golden skin glowing from within. It was too much surface area for Yibo’s brain and he had to turn away and clear his throat.

“Why would you do that?” the god’s voice was soft and dangerous.

Yibo steeled himself and parted the crimson veil as though he were brushing a stray hair from the god’s forehead. Xiao Zhan’s too-bright eyes glinted at him from under the shadow of the brim.

“You _know_ why.”

The prince of the underworld was blessed with catlike reflexes, so he managed to lurch back and evade Xiao Zhan’s sword as it sliced through the two bamboo culms between them. Yibo hooked his guandao on the node of a nearby stalk and used it to launch himself up toward the canopy. Instead of unfurling his wings, he ran lightly across the leaves. This was his world: he was only bound by his imagination. To take advantage of his full power here was no fun.

Soon enough, the rustling bamboo leaves told him he was being pursued. He sped up, knowing that, without his wings, he probably couldn’t outpace the god for long.

Which was the plan.

That rustling grew louder. Yibo ducked, narrowly escaping a head-chopping. He dropped through the canopy to the undergrowth below and blew himself a clean path through the bamboo. As he ran, he sprouted stalks in his wake. He could hear Xiao Zhan cursing as he was forced to dull his beautiful spiritual blade bushwhacking through the forest. 

When he reached the edge of the wood, he grew a pond and ran across it. Xiao Zhan tried to follow him across, and when the god was only ten feet behind, Yibo grew the lake more and more, making the man run five times, ten times as far, until his spiritual energy began to flag, and he had trouble keeping himself on the surface. The skirts of his scarlet robes darkened to burgundy as the water splashed up around his legs, the silk clinging to his calves, intensifying the struggle.

On a whim, Yibo erased the lake with a wave of his hand and Xiao Zhan came barrelling forward and into him, knocking Yibo onto his back. He caught Xiao Zhan as he fell, slipping his hands under the veil and grabbing hold of the god’s waist, pulling their hips flush. He angled his head to sneak under the brim of the hat, the veil fluttering around them both like a bed canopy.

“Still wanna kill me?” he murmured, laying back with a lazy smile, sliding his hands down Xiao Zhan’s hips to grope his ass through the layers of fabric.

“Bastard, I want to kill you more.” The god’s eyes flashed but he made no move to escape.

“Yeah, don’t foresee any follow-through on that.”

Xiao Zhan blinked owlishly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in that long throat. Yibo had to stop himself from lurching up to suck it.

“This can’t . . . it can’t happen, so you need to _stop_.” Xiao Zhan’s voice was small and careful.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“I don’t, actually.”

Xiao Zhan bared his teeth. “You’re being asinine.”

“That’s not a real word,” Yibo said, asininely. He was momentarily distracted by the tiny mole below the god’s bottom lip. He so rarely saw Xiao Zhan’s face: he’d almost forgotten about that mark. It took all his willpower not to touch it, kiss it, tongue it en route to the god’s protruding bottom lip.

“Ugh. Why’re you like this?” Xiao Zhan’s upper lip lifted in a withering sneer.

“Like what?” Yibo slid his hand over Xiao Zhan’s ass and down between his thighs, pressing his fingers against the god’s taint and balls.

Xiao Zhan glared, inhaling sharply. One swift movement and he had a dagger to Yibo’s throat.

The lord of the underworld snickered. “That’s so cute. You’re really cute, you know that?”

“You forget I’ve killed many of your kind. I suggest you stop belittling me.”

“Pff. I wouldn’t dream of belittling you.”

“You’re doing it right now!” Xiao Zhan roared.

“I’m _not_. I can tell you’re a good size. A grow-er for sure, but there’s no shame in that.” Yibo sniggered at his own joke.

Xiao Zhan flicked his wrist and nicked the skin. The knife had spiritual power, enough to pierce demonic flesh, and Yibo felt a bead of blood slither down his neck.

“Molest me again, monster, and I’ll. . .”

“-What?” Yibo leaned in closer, the knife cutting into the tender skin around his windpipe.

“I said, ‘I dare you to touch me like -’”

“-What did you say?” He tilted even closer, until they were almost nose to nose, pain radiating up towards his jaw as the knife sliced deeper. Now he could smell his own blood.

“I. . . I said. . .” Xiao Zhan’s eyes widened in panic, his mouth dropping open. In his distress, he released the pressure he exerted on the knife.

Yibo took the opportunity to surge forward and capture the god’s mouth in a cheeky kiss. A little tongue; a little bite. Xiao Zhan always tasted like salt, mangosteen, and young tea leaves.

Then Yibo lowered his skull back to the ground, his laugh like a raven’s. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear anything you’re saying. You’re just so fucking cute. And so bossy. Cute and bossy. But I think I’m into that. Go on – say another cute thing. Use lots of big words. I promise to listen. I promise I’ll try.”

Of course he was listening, but he also slipped his hand between their stomachs to stroke Xiao Zhan’s cock through his robes. It swelled in his palm, the heat palpable even through five thousand layers of fabric (well five layers, but it was still way too much clothing).

The god shuddered, dropping the knife. He closed his eyes and panted. “Why’re you. . .”

“Perfect?”

“. . .Shut up, you ass. How. . .How’re you this shameless?”

Yibo murmured, “Do you want me to stop? ‘Cause I will.”

Soft, erratic breathing was the only reply.

“Do you like this? Do you like me doing this to you?”

The god nodded his head and moaned softly. His horny flush was almost the same as his drunken glow.

“Some virtuous paragon you are. . . getting jacked off by a demon in an underworld wasteland surrounded by thousands of invisible peeping ghosts. Speaking of shameless. . . ”

Xiao Zhan’s eyes flew open. When he raised his fist in retaliation, Yibo begrudgingly released his ass and grabbed the god’s wrist. He placed a kiss on the fleshy part of his palm, a second at his pulse, and then nipped at the bright veins that travelled down his forearms like rivers.

“Where’s your zhong yi?”

“Excuse me? I’m wearing them!”

“No. Your regular ones.”

The god’s lashes flapped in surprise. He huffed. “So what? I can wear what I want.”

Yibo smiled.

“ _What_?”

“You got dressed up to visit me.”

“I _didn’t_.”

“You _did_.”

Xiao Zhan looked pained. Yibo knows this look now: it’s a tell-tale sign of conflict and mental dissonance. Xiao Zhan was warring between what he once understood and the new version of truth overwriting those old beliefs.

But back then, Yibo just wanted to win this contest where the challenge and the prize were one. “I could look at you forever.”

The god winced and laughed, and it was like a single sunbeam splitting a storm. “The way you do that. . . I can’t handle it. It’s addictive. Like you’re the only one in the world who looks at me the way I want to be seen. And I want to be seen that way because it’s how you see me. It’s too much. It makes me feel . . . fuck, stop. _Stop._ Let me go.”

Yibo released Xiao Zhan, who sat back on his haunches between Yibo’s knees, dragging the veil over Yibo’s crown, face, chest, until it fluttered closed. Until it put a wall between them.

The veil was overdramatic, but also effective at hiding shame. Shame and a divine boner.

“Do you even like being a god?” Yibo asked, sitting up.

“What does it matter?” Xiao Zhan picked up his dagger and slipped it into his belt. He pulled off his soaked boots and squeezed some of the water out of them.

“You just seemed happier when you were a human.”

The air stilled. “How do you know what I was like as a human?”

*^*

All his gifts have turned to dust – the bamboo forest, the rapeseed fields, even the mountains and the waterfalls, eroding, drying up, without his power to tend them.

Yibo leads the ghosts to the edge of his land, where a sky-high iron door stands upright without a frame or a wall to hold it in place. The demon lord doesn’t bother to knock. At his authority, the door groans and heaves into motion, opening onto the plains around the great metropolis of the dead. The goblin guard lazing at the foot of the door squawks in surprise and bows. Yibo ignores him and points from the cloud of ghosts to the door.

“Go.”

It doesn’t take anything more than that for the frenzied storm to surge through the gate and toward the future.

“That’s too many ghosts for our system to process!” squeaks the goblin.

“Take it up with management.”

He slams the door shut, but doesn’t miss the puff of wind that slips through the crack before the lock clicks. When he turns around, an entity of pure black smoke shaped like a large cat blocks his path. The smoke curls around him, skimming his ear, his shoulder. It smells of sulphur, old blood and burnt sugarcane.

“You are very young this time. . .” It says, all clacking consonants and no tone, only breath.

He flips it off. “I’m a life older than I was last time. Get out of my face – I’m leaving, already.”

“What’s the hurry? Let’s chat. Shall I slip into something more comfortable for you, my lord? Ah, what to wear?”

It swirls through a rainbow of colours, before taking form, sprouting limbs and a head that solidify, growing black and white street clothes, dark hair, and a familiar figure. All the features are right, but the poisonous nature of the fiend under the skin warps the container.

Always fucking Wenhan.

“How’s this for you?” The creature wearing Li Wenhan’s face cracks a smile and it’s a sick parody of Yibo’s old friend. He pats himself down to make sure he’s completely materialised. Satisfied, he taps his cheek. “You have a type: handsome.”

“If you’re angling for a kiss, that bait-y crap was just for the cameras. Sorry if that sinks your ship, Qiongqi-ge.”

The legendary chaos fiend chuckles and bows, mockingly. “I wouldn’t dream of rooting against your epic love story, _Empty World Lord_. And I don’t intend to keep you.”

“Fine. Move.”

“ _But_. . . I thought I might give you a heads up, outcast to outcast.”

Yibo’s been around long enough to know what Qiongqi is and what he reaps. “I don’t have time for your shit. Excuse me.” Yibo unfurls his wings and pushes off.

“Heaven’s making a move on your boy.”

Yibo would never believe anything Qiongqi said, save the fact those ghosts suggested the same thing. He hovers in mid-air before dropping to his feet. “What?”

The fiend in idol clothes shrugs. “That’s just what I heard. Folks say he was taken to the Empyrean Emperor himself. They’ve never done that before, right? But what do I know?”

Wenhan’s features suddenly melt, his t-shirt and jacket whirling together. The clothing explodes into a chequered suit and the face reconstitutes itself into the smiling features of Da Zhangwei, complete with shaggy mop and manic energy. “Actually, I’d say I know a few things: I’ve been in this world a hot second. Notice you both have pretty sweet lives this time around. Yeah, that includes Xiao Zhan. Sure, there was that angry online mob ‘situation’ last year, but that had no supernatural rhyme or reason. That was straight-up humanity at its pettiest. Heaven’s left him alone this entire turn and he’s thrived. Now, he’s been called upstairs for tea with the jade boss. Sounds cozy to me.”

Yibo snorts. “Zhan-ge gets to visit the emperor and I get quality time with _you_? Getting shafted here and not in the good way.”

“It’s true. I’m just a lowly mythical deportee with no power. I certainly can’t give you your immortality. And we know the president of Deadtown ain’t gonna give you a chance to run the black gauntlet to get your status back. Nobody wants you swinging your weight around here again, kid. But he might be tempted to give you a little underworld homestead with your sweetheart. For a favour, that is.”

“You talking for the king of the underworld now?” Yibo snorts. “I don’t have time for a crossroads. I just want to go upstairs, use up all my temporary spiritual energy in an epic fuckfest, and live out the next sixty years in peace with Xiao Zhan so I can do it all over again. I really don’t think that’s asking a lot.”

“Don’t you want to know the favour?”

Yibo shrugs, smirk tugging up his cheek. “Doesn’t matter. Not tempted by the reward.”

Da Zhangwei’s features shimmer and rearrange, the torso and face narrowing, legs elongating, eyes rounding and swooping at the edges. The chequered suit transforms into slim, cuffed jeans and a baby blue sweater with a stretched-out neckline and overlong sleeves. That chaotic mop yields, softening to skim the eyebrows. He’s wearing Yibo’s favourite kicks and a corruption of his favourite smile.

Goddamn it. He used to masturbate to this photo so much.

“Not tempted at all, Lao Wang?” Qiongqi as late-stage X-Nine Xiao Zhan cocks his head coyly. “At the end of this lifetime, or when you’re tired of the middle kingdom, the king will let you live out your existence together in this very wasteland, undisturbed, for eternity. That is, if you and Xiao Zhan sign over your powers to the seat of the underworld.”

He swallows hard. This face is ruining him. “Why would we ever do that?”

Qiongqi pouts with Xiao Zhan’s mouth. “Why not? I’m sure you can lure people into buying luxury goods they can’t afford without your demonic sway. What’s he going to do with his powers? Inspire more fanporn? Encourage those moony girls to buy even more microwave hotpot meals and perfumed milk? They’ll just resent him when they get chubby.”

Despite having spent four months in 2018 wanting nothing more than to beat the hell out of flirty Xiao Zhan – despite having spent lifetimes bickering with this man over the pettiest things - Yibo has never wanted to punch this face more. “I’m done.”

“So you don’t think, given the option, that he would offer up his _suppressed_ power so you could be together for all time?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, not even gonna give him the choice, huh? Got news for you, babe: the underworld isn’t the only one making this offer. Not sure what the emperor’s deal is, but the four great martial lords cornered your boy the moment he stepped into the upper realm. They’d like some more wars, please and thank you, and offered to protect you both in exchange for his powers of influence and your authority over souls.”

Yibo’s stomach twists.

“They’d steal it if they could: I mean, he’s just a helpless mortal ninety-nine percent of the time. But both your powers are inextricably tied to the logistics of the samsara curse – you get one juiced day per lifetime in case you want to annihilate each other and end your suffering- so no one can touch those powers. They’re like, in escrow. Thus, we have all these players trying to find ways around Cloud Master’s contract.

“The Underworld would rather Heaven not cause more wars. The administrators literally can’t handle processing souls as is. Eight billion humans is more than our infrastructure can handle at the best of times, and lately we’ve been especially inefficient, what with the supernatural in-fighting and attempted coups, et cetera. If the king had both you and your boy’s powers, maybe there’d be more work finished and less mutinous talk from the demon court.”

“Or _no_ mutinous talk.” No opposition at all. That’s never been the way of the underworld. That’s how the upper realm does things, with iron-fisted control and slavish hierarchy. The underworld is chaotic, like a poorly run company. Like a Yueha subsidiary. 

“King says order – you say tyranny. Potato, potahto, Demon Lord-gege.” Qiongqi drapes Xiao Zhan’s arms over Yibo’s shoulders and plays with the baby hair at the nape of his neck. He murmurs, “it’s been so long since he touched you. How does that feel?”

Like spiders under his skin. Shuddering, Yibo shunts the clingy fiend off him, throwing him to the ground. “What do you get in all of this?”

Qiongqi leans back on his elbows and abuses Xiao Zhan’s smile. “Me? Nothing. I just find your turmoil entertaining. It feeds me. It’s been so boring down here and you’re bad at keeping your emotions in check. Anyway, think about the offer. I’m sure your better half will be fretting about his.” He stands, smacking dust from the seat of his jeans. Yibo can’t help but check him out and immediately regrets doing so.

“You did my baby dirty with that flat ass, monster.”

“You’ll also hate the fact that I made him a Ken doll.” Qiongqi grins and pats his deflated groin. “Enjoy your day, Wang. Yi. Bo.”

The fiend whirls into black smoke and assumes his typical panthera silhouette to trot towards the gate. Yibo swears he can hear the fiend purring.

Fuck this place.

He follows the sound of the active array back to the middle kingdom.

An ambivalent demon stands in a field after midnight, alone. The fact that he’s alone only deepens his uncertainty.

Yibo checks his phone for the time, but the array’s energy surge knocked out the battery. His earlier words to Xiao Zhan come back to bite him in the ass when he goes to inspect his watch and remembers he never bothered to set the time.

Xiao Zhan never has to know that.

. . .Yeah right. The next time he clocks his watch and Xiao Zhan’s within earshot he’ll blurt it out. He knows he’s a clown. 

Even more clownish: he’s still in his demon form and isn’t even wearing the Rolex. His mortal clothes and accessories are tucked into a _qian kun_ pouch at his hip.

Part of him wants to change back into his leathers and assume his mortal façade. But he knows Xiao Zhan will be disappointed. Yibo is happy to just leave the past where it belongs, but Xiao Zhan has a nostalgic soul.

If he has to be a demon, he might as well be the most extra one possible. Yibo pulls out all the stops, like he used to when he knew the god of inspiration was en route for one of their ‘dates’. He lets the wind tug at his hair until it’s the length of a gust, and makes himself a torc of gold and jewels stolen from long-forgotten tyrants. His shadow expands and takes on mass, draping from his shoulder like a mantle and blankets the ground around his feet, swallowing light like a black hole.

Yibo pricks his thumb with one long incisor and smears the bead of demon blood on his lips, staining them dark. He smears that same blood across his forehead to activate his demon mark.

There. If his stylists were here, they’d probably be able to do better, but he’s picked up a few things over the last couple thousand years. As an artist, Yibo knows drama when he sees it.

Really, the only ‘narrative’ he ever wanted in his style as a lord of the underworld was to make the god of inspiration a bit nervous and a lot horny. He’s sure he succeeded, considering their rabbity dual cultivation agenda.

Speaking of . . . where the hell is Xiao Zhan?

_‘The underworld isn’t the only one making this offer.’_

They’ve been together longer than even most immortals can fathom. They’ve kissed more times. Laughed more. Fucked more.

Also argued more. Disagreed more. Fought more.

Some lifetimes there was endless bickering. There was an era when they were scribe apprentices together: pedantic, spoiled, selfish little shits. Xiao Zhan had a brush lodged firmly up his ass for ten years, and Yibo . . . also had a brush lodged firmly up his ass for ten years. They were like rival concubines trying to scheme and connive and one-up each other for their handsome master’s approval. They both earned prestigious jobs for adversarial ministers and inadvertently had both the ministers and themselves fired in spectacularly public fashion due to their out-of-control rivalry. It wasn’t until they both ended up penniless and disgraced, stuck begging for jobs at an archive, that they wound up naked and entangled in an alcove while the wizened old historian shuffled around the stacks calling out for their assistance. 

In other existences, the fights were more complex because their lives were more complex. They weren’t twenty-two and vying for glorified internships. Instead, they were in their forties or fifties, with wives and children, households, retainers, positions, responsibilities. During the opium war with the British, they were on opposite sides, although both against the trade. As part of the diplomatic envoy to Britain, Xiao Zhan tried every way possible to stymie the conflict, having witnessed the gunboat diplomacy Queen Victoria’s navy employed. Yibo lost his eldest son to the opium trade – there was no way he would offer his support for the infantilising British treaty. He would fight to the death to keep that poison out of his homeland.

They didn’t settle their quarrel for fifteen years. Not until both their wives had died. Not until they were grandfathers. They spent their last ten years together until Yibo passed of pneumonia. Xiao Zhan followed three days later. That was a complex life.

But the first time they fought – not with swords, not as low-key flirting – was the hardest.

. . .Fuck, he won’t go there tonight. There’s no reason to think about that. He’s just being morose. This night is dark enough already.

This night.

Fifteen hundred years ago, the god of inspiration was slaughtered on this array. It’s now powered by his lingering spiritual energy. The grass and trees don’t grow because of the trauma this land endured. It’s always warm because it’s saturated with his godhood.

Both the upper realm and the princes of the underworld thought their relationship was strategic: that Yibo was making a play for the throne in an age when demons and gods still waged war for dominion over the middle kingdom’s resources. The shadow court released their hungry ghosts into the city and spread word to Xiao Zhan’s parishioners that he’d been corrupted by a ruthless tyrant, poisoning their minds against him. When he came to save his temples, he was beset. He fought all the way to the outskirts, destroying all the ghosts, draining his qi.

That’s when the masses fell on him, ripping apart his body, rending his soul, soaking the field with his divine blood. Gods are immortal, but their worshippers keep them that way. And their zealots are the only mortals who can kill them.

He was torn asunder – skin, muscle, skeleton, soul. Only a fragile wisp of spirit remained, which the immortal Cloud Chamber Master gathered for safe keeping.

The Upper Kingdom did nothing to help, as they didn’t trust Xiao Zhan either. But they certainly took their revenge on Yibo seriously.

In a selfish universe, no one believes in selfless motivation.

He can still feel his first death in his body: the way the blood bubbled in his chest and up into his throat; how his intestines looked outside his skin, coiled on his abdomen; how every rasping exhalation leaked out more spiritual energy.

The martial masters intended to scatter his essence to the four corners of the world, so that he would never reconstitute. But Cloud Chamber Master intervened on behalf of Xiao Zhan, punishing and saving them both.

They called this a curse. But it’s been a blessing to be human so many times.

_“Yibo.”_

Xiao Zhan has returned.

TBC

****

If you're an adult, come hang with me on twitter and talk about mxtx or bjyx. [Noon on bird app](https://twitter.com/Noon92361356)


	3. Chapter 3

A god and a demon lord face off in the middle of a scorched-earth array. The god stands twenty mortal steps away – ten steps for him. He wears a crimson shenyi embroidered with silver thread and a black mili with that impenetrable blood-red veil that extends all the way to the ground and trails behind him, a tiny slit down the front the only glimpse at what’s really secreted away. Everything else is obfuscated, mysterious, fuel for imagination.

Even after all these lifetimes, Yibo doesn’t know if he hates the stupid hat or if it’s the sexiest thing he’s ever seen. But seeing him like this, he realises why he was often so mesmerised by Xiao Zhan’s face. It’s a face he loves, of course, but there’s always been something a little scandalous, even taboo, about staring at Xiao Zhan openly. That is, besides the fact that when Yibo lets himself stare his queer is on display for the whole world to see.

“Lao Wang.”

“Zhan-ge.”

Xiao Zhan takes five steps forward; Yibo matches his distance with seven of his own. Xiao Zhan is just tall enough that Yibo clears the brim of the hat as he parts the veil and steps inside.

He doesn’t know which one is brighter – the eyes lit by the light of heaven, or that smile.

“Gods, look at you.” Xiao Zhan’s flirty elevator eyes always do it for him. “Did I keep you waiting?”

“Yeah.”

Xiao Zhan laughs ruefully. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Yibo openly stares, failing to hold back his grin. “I’m used to you being late. It’s why I’m perfect – to balance your many flaws.”

Xiao Zhan bares his teeth and backhands him in the shoulder. Yibo grabs Xiao Zhan’s wrists and pulls him close. He shakes him a little for good measure.

Xiao Zhan struggles to free himself, but gives up quickly. He whines and it’s especially undignified for a god. “Lao Wang. This is the first time we’ve touched in a year and you decide to abuse me. Couldn’t you kiss me tenderly or something, like in a drama? Am I not even good enough for tacky fictional romance?”

“You hit me first. And you’re really not.”

Xiao Zhan sighs, defeated. “You win. I concede, Demon Lord. Your beauty is too distracting and I’ve lost the will to fight.”

“Psh. Your beauty’s too distracting. Every time I see you I forget how to breathe I’m so hypnotised.”

“. . . Gross. Just stop talking.”

“What? You can say cheesy crap to me but I can’t say it back?”

“Obviously that’s what’s happening he-”

Kiss.

It’s been over a year since they kissed. Over a year since they woke up in that rumpled bed, hair sticking up in clumps, greasy from old product and sweat. Over a year since Xiao Zhan flashed him that smile and nuzzled the childhood scar on Yibo’s sternum. Over a year since they did the math and decided they had enough time before Yibo’s flight for one more round.

It was exciting. Everything they did was novel, loaded with heat and anticipation and a little shyness.

It feels like a lifetime since Xiao Zhan climbed on top of him, eyes hooded and imperious, staring him down as the man slowly impaled himself on Yibo’s slick cock. The muscles of his thighs flexed and strained under Yibo’s hands until he was fully seated, the weight of him settled across Yibo’s pelvis. Even before they started, his cock hung heavy over Yibo’s abdomen, the early morning sunlight glinting off a bead of precum.

“Lao Wang?” Xiao Zhan’s voice was hoarse from the previous night.

“Yeah?”

“Help . . .me move?” His smoulder disintegrated, leaving a ditzy smile. “I don’t know how to do this. The porn made it look easy.”

Yibo laughed at that, the quake of his abdomen joggling Xiao Zhan up and down. True to form, Xiao Zhan started to laugh just as hard.

“Don’t laugh! It feels too weird. Fuck, let me off this thing!”

But it didn’t take them long to find the right rhythm, the right angle, together. Their bodies slotted so perfectly. Yibo guided Xiao Zhan’s hips while the man worked his thighs, sliding up and down in long, leisurely strokes. They teased one another: with their words, with their bodies, following the long fuse of their sensations towards the explosive end.

It was as though they had all the time in the world to perfect this new choreography. 

They kissed six times goodbye before Yibo left for the airport.

Over a year.

So this kiss is three-hundred and seventy days in the making. This kiss is a collision of a hundred lives. It’s the culmination of dozens of failed attempts to survive mortality, and the sum of a million similar, but now inferior, kisses. It is the new standard of their kisses that should be impossible to match.

When they break, they lean on one another to recuperate, protected from the world by Xiao Zhan’s enchanted hat: forehead to forehead, nose to nose, pelvis to stomach, their fingers intertwined at their sides.

Xiao Zhan sucks on his bottom lip. “I forgot how incredible you taste.”

“I remembered.”

Without disconnecting, Xiao Zhan smacks him in the ass lightly. “Wang Yibo, I was complimenting you. Take the compliment. Aish, you ruin everything.”

“You ruin everything by forgetting.”

“Ah, sure sure.” Xiao Zhan forfeits with a smile. He slides his arms around Yibo’s waist and clasps his hands like a lock. “Shall we go home, Demon Lord-ge?”

“Your home?” They haven’t talked about this. It’s hard to believe they haven’t, since all they’ve been able to do is talk. Truthfully, they hadn’t really had space to discuss domestic things when entire shared lives kept popping up like fully-developed films in their minds. That and the copious amounts of virtual sex. 

“Um . . .Sure. Or yours. It doesn’t matter to me. . .”

“-Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Your place is probably cleaner.”

“Your place is nicer. Decorated. There’s food. Furniture.”

“Yeah, but. . .“

“-My place is storage. Your place is loved. I want to go to your place.”

Xiao Zhan nods. “Okay.”

“Besides, half my clothes are there.”

“Ah, that’s true!”

“I want them back.”

Xiao Zhan hums, non-comital, and pulls away, hiding behind his stupid veil, leaving a cold empty space where his body should be. “We’ll _see_.”

“No. For real, Zhan-ge. I need to be seen wearing them or it’ll be a breach of contract.”

The god laughs, coquettish. “Eh? If that’s true, maybe don’t use me as your concierge.”

“They don’t even fit your scrawny ass!”

Sharp inhalation. “Wang Yi _bo_ , who’s scrawny!?”

“Obviously, you.” He clings to the laughter threatening to burst forth. He’s not that sticky twenty-year-old anymore, spiralling out trying to read his crush’s whims: he’s well-versed in Xiao Zhan’s particular Scoville scale.

Xiao Zhan huffs in anger. Fake anger. He’d be walking out of the room right now if there was a door he could dramatically slam for a joke. With no outlet, he yields. “Ah, you’re right of course. We start filming the new season of Joy of Life in three weeks. Yan Bingyun is the same size as Wei Wuxian. If I even smell sugar between now and then I will already be too fat for the costume.”

Having made out with Wei Wuxian multiple times, Yibo has thought about what it’d be like sleeping with Xiao Zhan’s other characters. Xiao Zhan has described at length the vivid Xie Yun sex dreams he had during his Legend of Fei binge, although Yibo’s pretty sure he stole half the details from some random porn to get them both in the mood. Yibo quite likes the idea of fucking school arc Lin Xiuya: the guy has pretty hair and big virgin vibes. And Beitang Mo Ran clearly has a sex dungeon in the basement of his palace where he gracefully doms from the bottom. But Yibo has refrained from thinking about fucking Yan Bingyun since the character looks and feels like a human icicle. Xiao Zhan is not a naturally cold person – not even seventeen hundred years ago when he hid behind that pompous, tsundere mask – but he has iced out Yibo before.

The heat, Yibo can handle: Xiao Zhan’s _Kelvin_ scale is something else. That cold hits him hard, in a primal, vulnerable place.

_How do you know what I was like as a human?_

Yibo coughs. “You know you can eat whatever you want while you’re a god.”

Xiao Zhan flings back the veil in delight. “Wow! You’re a genius, Lao Wang! Certified big brain. Ok – let’s stop and pick up some egg tarts, aiwowo, pumpkin pancakes – oh god, ever since your last ad I’ve been craving KFC - ”

“It’s the middle of the night.“

“It’s only two a.m. – someone will be open! Traffic will be lighter. . .”

“-Zhan-ge, let’s go home. We can eat whatever you want in the morning.”

Yibo’s not sure what his face is doing, but whatever it is makes Xiao Zhan blush.

“Sure. Yeah. Let’s go home, then.”

He picks up Xiao Zhan’s parka and stuffs it in his qiankun pouch. Gods and demons don’t feel the cold, so he won’t need the coat for the next twenty one hours. Not until they come back here.

Xiao Zhan makes a whiny sound in his throat when Yibo changes his appearance to his leathers. To placate him, Yibo leaves the demon mark and grows his hair out a bit. Xiao Zhan cards his fingers through the fringe, pushing it out of his eyes.

“Where’s your car?”

Xiao Zhan lowers his eyelashes. “I had Wang Liu drop me off.”

“And he _did_ it?” Xiao Zhan’s damn intern. He’s a nice kid but he’s too soft. Too busy being starstruck to take care of Xiao Zhan’s dumb ass. Who in their right mind would drop off _Xiao Zhan_ on the side of the highway in the middle of the night in January and just drive off? Wang Liu: that’s who. And of course Xiao Zhan knows that. He probably didn’t even ask anyone else on his staff since the rest are too sensible.

“Don’t be mad at him. I’m the boss – I asked him to. I said you were picking me up. I thought . . . I thought that I could ride back with you. Since I’m in this form, it’s not so dangerous, right?” 

“I’m going to kill him.”

Xiao Zhan winces. “Okay, well, wait until you’re not in your demon overlord form so he can reincarnate. Also, don’t do that? I just want to ride with you. I want to wrap my arms around you and bury my face in your hair and be alone with you on the road. Can you blame me? I thought you might want that too.”

Yibo wants to live and fester in his annoyance for a little while longer. But there are too few hours in this day for that. He’s going to make every one of them special. Every lifetime he does this to try and counteract the bilious pain in his gut when he remembers the intention behind this anniversary.

“You’re wearing a helmet. So no burying your face in anything except _helmet_.” He reaches down through the earth, into his underworld, and fashions a helmet for Xiao Zhan. It’s modelled on his tracer helmet, but with red highlights instead of green, and there’s a small heart with a dot above the left ear.

Yeah, a couples helmet. Whatever. He’s a sap. He doesn’t care. He tosses it over.

“It’s beautiful.” Xiao Zhan smooths his hand over the outer shell, thumbing at the diffuser.

He tries not to preen. “Pff. Based off your design. Now who’s the narcissist?”

“A _collaboration_. It has your stamp.” He taps the heart. “While you’re at it, make me some matching motoleathers too?” He takes off the mili and places it in his qiankun pouch. His hair is tied up in a pristine bun wrapped with a red leather thong.

Yibo nods. “You need to take down your hair or change it. Ji won’t fit under a helmet.”

He pulls energy into the mortal realm from his underworld and begins at Xiao Zhan’s feet, sliding his hands over the man’s body as he grows modern leather armour to protect this person he loves. Boots, trousers, gloves, jacket: he ends by drawing the collar of the jacket around Xiao Zhan’s neck, snugly tucking the zipper under his chin. After the months of bitching, he’s surprised to see Xiao Zhan’s hair is back to hedgehog length.

Xiao Zhan scratches at his head. “I couldn’t make up my mind. I was too, um, distracted. You can change it.”

“This is good for a helmet.”

“Then this was entirely purposeful.” He tugs at his collar. “I wish I had your shoulders. Not sure I can pull this off. . .”

“Don’t worry, Zhan-ge,” Yibo slips his hands down Xiao Zhan’s hips and leans in to murmur against his ear, “I’ll be the one pulling them off.”

Snort. “You don’t need to seduce me, Yibo-ge, I’m a sure thing.” Despite his joking tone, Xiao Zhan shivers under his hands and Yibo is satisfied.

Well, almost. There’s a pit in his gut and he has to address it first. He can’t wait the hour it’ll take to get home. If he doesn’t say it now. . .

He coughs. “Did anything happen? In the upper realm? Was everything okay?”

Xiao Zhan goes still in his arms. And, as quiet as his heart is, Yibo feels it flutter off-beat.

“It. . . was fine. It felt weird, I guess? They’re trying to incorporate structures of human technology into their existing arcane systems and it’s all. . . it’s very awkward. It’s like watching those smart uncles you adored as a kid try to set-up the newest iphone. I mean, most of them were war heroes, generals, kings, poets, sages: they don’t know how the stock market works, modern psychology, how to access Weibo settings. . .”

Yibo doesn’t know those things either, but then again the underworld still gloomily bumbles its way through a three thousand year old system. “Maybe they need to figure out a cultivation path through hedgefund management or mobile app development so they can fill out their team.”

“I don’t dare joke! They would take it at face.” Xiao Zhan shakes his head. “I think they’re feeling . . . obsolete. Lost. The world moves so fast now that the humans don’t even give them a chance to tend to their responsibilities. They do it themselves or we’re just . . . already onto the next calamity. Some of the nature gods are going mad because everything they knew about this world is turned on its axis. And without the human worship, they have so little power to fix it. It was. . . was actually upsetting being there, not able to help. They’re almost afraid of the humans. The veneration they showed me this visit was more because I was a modern human than because of my past status.”

Well that . . . made sense. It made more sense than any of the bullshit Qiongqi spouted.

“I even had tea with the emperor! Can you believe that? I didn’t even think he knew my name. But he knew both my ancient name and my present-day name. Wah, it was crazy.” There’s a sparkle in Xiao Zhan’s eyes that’s usually reserved for talking about Stephanie Sun and EXO.

“Wow. The Jade Emperor. Did you talk about stocks?”

“Hah. I’d have to know something about that myself. No, he actually asked me about being an idol? If you can believe that? It felt like an actual dream: absolute nonsense made by mashing together unconnected bits of life. Best tea I’ve ever had, though.” He smiles and tugs on Yibo’s zipper. “What about you? What happened to you down there?”

“Same old shit. Cleared a bunch of overstock ghosts out of my world. Ran into Qiongqi.”

“Ah? What did that old fiend have to say?”

Something flickers in Xiao Zhan’s eyes: a microexpression. Anyone else probably wouldn’t notice. But Yibo’s literate in both micro movements and this man’s face.

Over the last five years, Xiao Zhan has purposefully worked his look from having three expressions to the full repertoire of human emotion. His face is a Stradivarius and he is a virtuoso: that’s what Haikuan-ge said, when they watched from the sidelines as Wei Wuxian articulated his rage and pain at Nightless City, screaming and crying for take after take, choking on snot and bursting blood vessels in his eyes.

Haikuan is actually a pretty smart guy when he’s paying attention (which he rarely does and Yibo respects that, because why bother sometimes?)

Even still, as Zhan-ge was learning to control his face, Yibo was watching how he did it. That was one of Lan Zhan’s responsibilities: watching Wei Ying.

Xiao Zhan is nervous and consciously schooling his face. Yibo’s not wrong about this: there’s something going on. It might be small. But it’s not nothing.

On their dark day, not-nothings worry him. 

“Yibo?”

“Just the same old Qiongqi shit. Stirring up drama. Apparently he ships me and Wenhan, so . . .”

“ _Wow_. The underworld’s against us even in CP wars. But, of course: it’s _Wenhan_ , so who can blame them. . .” Xiao Zhan yelps as Yibo swats him. In retaliation, he grabs hold of Yibo’s lapels and kisses him. Firm with a little lick of tongue and too short. “Let’s get out of here, hm? I want to be home with you.”

With Xiao Zhan settled behind him, arms wrapped around his waist (Yibo doesn’t remind him about the grab rails), they take off back to the city. They could have simply teleported using their powers, but Xiao Zhan’s right: Yibo wants this. He’s wanted it a long time. Just him and Xiao Zhan and the white noise of freedom.

Their combined weight slows the bike down, so Yibo feeds the motor and shocks a bit of devilish power to compensate. Everything about them is conspicuous (including Yibo’s speeding). Xiao Zhan draws spiritual energy from his milli to weave an illusion over them so they don’t have to worry about prying eyes catching the Tracer 85 logo on his kit.

The illusion doesn’t seem to stop the eyes, though. They get caught at a light right after they pull off the expressway and Yibo notices multiple late night commuters gawking at their bike. A couple men even snap photos with their phones.

“Zhan-ge, what kind of illusion did you cast?” he hollers over his shoulder to be heard over the idling engines.

He both hears and feels Xiao Zhan laugh behind him. What the absolute hell. Xiao Zhan snuggles up behind him and rubs his stomach, drifting his hands up to his chest. The men in the car around them snap more photos.

“Zhan-ge?”

That stupid adorable giggle. “We look. . .um, different.”

“No shit. How?”

“. . . Like motorcycle models.”

“Do you mean _girls?_ We look like hot girls in skimpy leathers cuddled up on my motorcycle? Wait, does it look like you’re grabbing my tits?”

“ _Yeah_.”

He snorts. “Dumbass. We didn’t want anyone looking at us and now all these perverts are staring with their hands down their pants.”

“Lao Wang, _I_ didn’t say I didn’t want to be looked at. I love seeing people stare at you. I want people to look at us together. I just don’t want them to know it’s _us_.” He taps Yibo’s shoulder. “Light changed.”

The five minutes between that stoplight and the next, Yibo is thinking about what Xiao Zhan said. Even though he’s a performer, Yibo hates strangers staring at him outside of work. It’s invasive and rude. He needs his privacy to explore who he is and who he’s becoming and this hasn’t changed with the Awakening. He spent a lot of his existence alone and is comfortable with that.

He assumed Xiao Zhan was like that too. The god of inspiration wore a veil. He spent the last nine months hiding from the public. Zhan-ge is an introvert and a homebody. This. . . _whatever_. . . is new and unexpected.

They get caught at another stoplight. The middle-aged man in the sedan beside them stares openly, his eyes slithering over Yibo’s body before sliding toward the tail of the bike. He licks his lips and smirks.

Yibo reaches back and grabs Xiao Zhan’s thigh possessively and then pulls that long leg forward to notch against his calf. He resists the temptation to release his demonic shadow to short circuit the electric onboard of the pervert’s new car. Instead, Yibo gives Xiao Zhan’s haunch a spank before he punches through the intersection a second early. 

The condo is dark when they arrive, the only light ambient from the streets below. Xiao Zhan sets his keys on the console table. Yibo closes the door behind them and locks both deadbolts. He pivots, arms out, to grab Xiao Zhan and throw him against the wall. It’s about time they christen this entire flat.

Air. Xiao Zhan’s gone. 

The man is already in the kitchen, his face in the refrigerator. When he pops out, he’s holding a little drink box, the straw already tucked between his lips. “Wah, those helmets are hot. Don’t know how you can stand them.” He fans himself with his hand.

“ _Wow_. So I was going to fuck you against the wall a second ago, but now you’re . . .what? Drinking juice?”

“Eh? It’s Zhen guo li. Strawberry. Want some? It’s really good.” He plays with his straw.

“Zhan-ge, don’t hock yoghurt at me right now. Not after you had your hand down my pants since the museum.” Yibo hates the whine in his voice, but sometimes it’s the only way to get Xiao Zhan to stop teasing. The bastard is clearly doing all of this on purpose.

“Sorry sorry. Let me just finish quick.” He sucks up a big gulp and chokes, the milky overflow dribbling out the corners of his mouth and down his chin.

Yibo does _not_ let him finish. He grabs Xiao Zhan’s forearms and marches him backwards until his shoulder blades hid the refrigerator door. Xiao Zhan doesn’t try to stop him as he is entirely focused on sucking up as much of his treat as he can before Yibo yanks it out of his hand and chucks the box in the sink.

Xiao Zhan purses his lips. “I’d be mad but that was hot.”

Yibo plants his hands on either side of Xiao Zhan’s head, caging him against the stainless steel door. Xiao Zhan slides his hands into Yibo’s back pockets and pulls him close, pressing his thigh against Yibo’s crotch. Grinding into it, Yibo licks the yoghurt from Xiao Zhan’s chin and then buries his face in that long neck, sucking the salt from his skin, feeling the quickening pulse under his tongue.

“Wang Yibo, you’re so fucking. . . How’re you real? How’re you mine?”

“You’re _mine_.” Yibo smiles as he kisses Xiao Zhan’s adam’s apple. “You lost that fight, remember?”

“That’s right.” He huffs a laugh. “I lost to you on purpose. Ow! Don’t bite!”

“Don’t _lie_.” Yibo kisses the tooth mark as an apology and unzips Xiao Zhan’s jacket. It’s real, not an illusion, but he didn’t grow any underclothes, so he’s greeted with glowing bare skin. He rolls one rosy brown nipple under his thumb and goes to take it in his mouth, but he catches something out of the corner of his eye.

“Zhan-ge, there are greasy fingerprints all over your fridge.”

“Yeah, it’s stainless. It happens. Focus.” He nips at Yibo’s bottom lip as he wrestles with Yibo’s fly. He lowers to a squat, dragging Yibo’s trousers down with him. A cool, delicate hand wraps around Yibo’s shaft and pulls him out of his pants. Pleasure glitters in his abdomen as Xiao Zhan kisses and swirls his tongue around the cockhead.

Xiao Zhan slowly laps his way from tip to base, stroking him in perfect counterpoint. He moves to mouth at Yibo’s balls, rolling each on his tongue, before suckling his way back up the shaft.

Yibo leans against the refrigerator door and closes his eyes, sinking into the hot, wet pressure of Xiao Zhan’s mouth, wrapped in the soundtrack of that hum and the sloppy squelches of a singer wrecking his throat to please.

Just as it's getting to be too much, Xiao Zhan pops off, spits in his hand and gives Yibo a couple of leisurely jerks. He nuzzles at Yibo’s abdomen, raking those slim fingers through Yibo’s pubic hair. “Yibo, fuck my face. You like that, right? Do it. I want you to.”

He opens his eyes and glances down at Xiao Zhan, whose lips are swollen and eyes already watery. With a commanding stare, Xiao Zhan leans his skull back against the refrigerator and settles his hands on Yibo’s hips, guiding him forward until the tip meets his mouth, smearing precum across those rosebud lips.

So he does. He clings to the sides of the fridge and rolls his hips forward into Xiao Zhan’s open mouth, following the channel of his tongue down that throat and back out to do it again and again. Xiao Zhan’s low purr tingles in his balls, in his sacrum, woollies his mind. He bucks faster, harder, racing after his release, fucking wantonly into Xiao Zhan’s trust and devotion.

The shockwave arrives on the offbeat and he peaks with a holler, first spilling out onto Xiao Zhan’s lips and then down his gullet every time after, the contractions of Xiao Zhan’s coughing throat milking him thoroughly.

The moment he catches his breath, he drops to his knees, wrapping himself around Xiao Zhan, kissing away the cum, the tears, stroking his throat gently. Xiao Zhan smiles, his eyes unfocused under drooping lids. He combs Yibo’s hair away from his forehead.

“We couldn’t do that last time because I had to sing.” Xiao Zhan’s voice is husky but not completely blown. “I’ve wanted to do it for a year.”

“I wanted it too.”

He smirks. “No shit.”

If Xiao Zhan wasn’t straining his trousers, Yibo had half a mind to whack him in the dick. “Shut up. Your kitchen is dirty. There are crumbs everywhere. I can see an old noodle under the cupboard. Let’s go to bed.”

“Fine.” Xiao Zhan leans back against the fridge dramatically. “I think you ploughed the wayfinding out of my brain. Carry me?” He lifts his arms like a toddler.

Yibo snorts.

“Wang Yibo, you’re a monster. Don’t laugh at my misfortunes. Be kind to me – you just knocked my head against the fridge a hundred times. If I were human, I’d be concussed. You should help your poor gege and carry him to bed before fucking buckets of demon cum into his belly.” He’s trying to keep a straight face but breaks, and rocks with soundless laughter.

“ _Wow._ ”

Xiao Zhan is incapable of speaking. He rolls over onto his side, still shaking with inexpressible stupidity.

They spend every single lifetime laughing. Often about demonic spunk.

Smirking, Yibo leans over Xiao Zhan’s shuddering body and whispers against his ear, “but, seriously, that’s _exactly_ what I’m going to do, Zhan-ge. I’m going to fill you up with devil-yin energy, so much that it violates you from the inside and keeps fucking your every cell even after I pull out and leave you ruined. And I know you want it. So get the hell up.”

Xiao Zhan stops laughing. He swallows hard and reaches for Yibo’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, this is part 1 of Chapter 3. The chapter is long and complex and worked better broken up, so I've split it in two sections. Just wanted to note this as this chapter probably feels short compared to the first two. I'll be posting the second part sometime this weekend.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CN: mention of 227 and depressive episode. If you need to skip this, it has been marked off with three asterisk (***).
> 
> Please check the most recent tags to ensure this story still fits within your comfort zone.

They don’t bother to turn on the bedroom lights and stumble over a variety of travel flotsam – suitcase and carry-on, multiple pairs of shoes, discarded airplane clothes. . . The bed is made, but covered in stuffed toys from fans, which causes Yibo to lose his mind. Growling, he begins to whip the toys across the room and out of their way.

“Be careful! Those were gifts!”

Yibo does not dignify that with a response. He grabs a large stuffed doll and goes to chuck it when Xiao Zhan snatches it out of his hands, hugging it to his chest. Yibo’s about to make fun of him for it until he realises which toy it is.

He gently picks up a handmade Xiao Zhan doll in a cozy zig zag jumper and glasses. Xiao Zhan’s holding its mate, a matching doll of Yibo in a Hawaiian shirt, board shorts and bucket hat. Despite being lovingly and meticulously crafted, both toys are a little worse for wear.

“Sorry, Zhan-ge. I didn’t see –“

“-It’s okay. I should’ve cleared them off. I’ve been barely sleeping here and don’t really have anywhere to store them, so I just . . . . Give me a sec?”

Yibo stands clear, holding the Xiao Zhan doll on his hip.

***

They thought their Awakening year would be easy this time around. They trained for it, they had technology, they had money.

None of those things help when you’re standing in front of the person you love and he’s breaking down.

Not when you when you can’t throw money at the problem.

Not when the problem is the technology.

Not when you can’t even hold him.

Xiao Zhan was the god of inspiration: he lived in service to humans. To their art, literature, science, war : all their great achievements, creative or destructive. What he thrived on, what he received in return, was their love.

Yibo stayed at Xiao Zhan’s condo during lockdown after his post-Hengdian quarantine, sleeping and working in the guest bedroom. He brought four lego kits, an extra xbox controller and his toothbrush.

His schedule was mostly empty since Legend of Fei was paused, although he had his regular commitments and meetings with his team. Xiao Zhan was gone a few days a week to a private studio where he recorded his voiceover for an upcoming drama. Otherwise, it was just them and time, which they’d never had.

They set up the living room so they each had a sofa and plenty of buffer between them. Sometimes they would spend hours gaming or watching donghua. Sometimes they enjoyed the quiet together: Yibo would build legos while Xiao Zhan read on his ipad. In the morning they took turns on the elliptical machine. At first Yibo choreographed routines for them, but the desire to correct Xiao Zhan’s form proved too strong and they nipped that in the bud. So Yibo danced and Xiao Zhan watched and wiggled along from the kitchen.

After dinner, Xiao Zhan practiced his singing: thirty minutes of technique and an hour of song rehearsal. Yibo mostly listened, but he always sang a few warmups – humming, lip trills, arpeggios - to keep his voice in shape. One night, Xiao Zhan brought out his guitar and played Young and Promising. They sang it together, leaving out the instrumental interlude because Xiao Zhan hadn’t learned it. Yibo forgot how much he loved singing together and how well their voices fit. 

Sometimes they ordered takeout from their favourite places. Sometimes Xiao Zhan cooked food that left Yibo’s tongue and lips numb. Over those couple of weeks he learned how to take the heat.

At night, they watched each other masturbate. One lay on Xiao Zhan’s bed with the other tied to the armchair in the corner.

They were rested. They were fat-faced. Even though the world was on fire, the time was a gift.

On the cusp of March, Yibo woke up in the middle of the night. Even though he didn’t have his demonic powers, he still had some sensitivity to the cosmos, to large-scale shifts in energy. He stepped out into the living room and found Xiao Zhan there, silhouetted against those two storey windows, looking small and fragile against the industrial architecture of the flat. He glanced back at Yibo and his eyes shimmered, ready to spill.

“Something’s wrong.”

Their bliss was over.

With his team, Xiao Zhan was an unflappable professional, quietly listening and responding to their advice on a matter they all swore would blow over in a few days. But when he turned off his phone, when he closed his computer, when there were no outside eyes on him, he was a zombie.

There were no more games. No more donghua. He fell asleep when Yibo threw on a drama. Xiao Zhan stopped singing and exercising and only ate a couple bites a day.

Yibo tried. He ordered them dinner. He cooked breakfast, such as it was. He cleaned, vacuumed, did the laundry, clothes, sheets. When Xiao Zhan wouldn’t get out of bed, he emailed on his behalf to reschedule meetings or recording sessions. He ran baths that went cold.

He lay on the floor beside Xiao Zhan’s bed in solidarity. When there was no movement from dawn to dusk, he had to stop himself from checking for a pulse.

Yibo got desperate. He shut himself away in his bedroom and raged in frustration. He knew in his heart that if he could just hold Xiao Zhan then he could make him better, even if he knew in his brain that that’s not how this works.

He thought he’d be better at this. They weathered worse over the lifetimes. But it took less than a week to resent Xiao Zhan.

Less than a week to leave him to his own devices. Less than a week for Yibo to immerse himself in videogames to forget. Less than a week to start to develop carpal tunnel from gaming from those awkward sofas. He opened one of the closets looking for a cushion to prop up his arm and was instead buried in a mound of plush toys Xiao Zhan was squirrelling away.

Oh, he fucking hated these things. This week had proven how truly cheap this plastic idolatry was.

He kicked the toys across the hall, muttering and cursing. In lieu of a pillow, he grabbed a stuffed toy and resumed his game. Yibo was playing like shit when he noticed Xiao Zhan had emerged from his room and was watching him. He hadn’t bathed in four days – his skin was greasy and broken out, his hair limp, plastered to his forehead. In his arms he carried one of the stuffed toys from the hallway, a large doll modelled after Yibo.

Technically, this was a gift for Yibo – the fan made one for each of them and gave them at the CQL fan meet – but Yibo handed his off to Xiao Zhan because Yibo liked the idea of Xiao Zhan owning a doll that wore his face.

Yibo realised in his haste he’d grabbed the matching Xiao Zhan plushie to prop up his arm. He casually smoothed out its face.

“Hey.” Yibo paused his game.

“Hey.” Xiao Zhan offered a painfully forced smile that made Yibo’s eyes tighten. 

“Do you want anything? Tea? Beer? There’s leftovers.”

Xiao Zhan shook his head. He curled up on his own sofa, arms wrapped around the Yibo toy, watching the real Yibo play better than he had all day.

The dolls became their proxies. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Xiao Zhan took to carrying that doll everywhere like a child. It would’ve been comical, a six foot tall grown ass man dragging around a stuffed toy, except it was heart-breaking. Even almost a year on, Yibo won’t tease him about it.

He thanks that doll for doing what he couldn’t.

While Xiao Zhan slept, Yibo crept into his room and stole the plushie so he could wash the tears, snot and sweat off it. He tried his best to mend a split in its foot with crazy glue. All before Xiao Zhan noticed the toy was missing.

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to do it – too many bad doujins, maybe. But he rubbed the clean doll in his hair, against his skin, his groin, before giving it back. If that doll was his proxy, it would smell like him too. Yibo had a bottle of Chanel Bleu sent to the condo. As part of the ritual, he spritzed it on his skin and let it dry down before including that in the scenting. Xiao Zhan was sensitive to fragrance – most made him sneeze, made his eyes water – but he loved Yibo in Bleu. He said it smelled how Yibo looked when he came out of the shower and that it didn’t cover up his natural scent. Xiao Zhan said that weird shit before they were even together-together and it still makes Yibo’s stomach flipflop. 

Eventually, Yibo slept with his doll too spooning it, holding it against his chest. Just as people burned effigies of his love online, he channelled his devotion into this doll as a cosmic counteraction.

One grey morning, he walked out into the great room to find Xiao Zhan sitting on his sofa with a familiar book.

“You’re reading Mo Dao Zu Shi again?”

Xiao Zhan shook his head. “I really want to, but I can’t focus enough to read the words.”

“We could watch the drama?” Neither of them had watched the entire thing before.

An ironic snort. “I don’t think I could look at my ugl. . . my face for forty hours.”

Yibo held out his hand. “Then I’ll read it to you.”

“. . . Really?”

“Of course. I just need some coffee.”

Xiao Zhan handed him the novel. “I’ll make it.”

He prepared their coffee and they sat in the living room together, on the separate sofas facing one another. Yibo cleared his throat and turned to the first page.

He forgot how much hated the opening line. Post-Awakening, he hated it even more.

“Great news! Wei WuXian is dead!”

_***_

_“Where are you? There are so many hungry ghosts here. They just keep coming. Who’s sending them?”_

_“The Plague Lord is making a move on the throne. He’s trying to blackmail me into helping him. My world’s under siege. I’ll be there when I can. Go back to the upper realm and get help.”_

_“I offered blood and fire at the Emperor’s shrine to call for assistance but no one’s responded. Something’s wrong. I. . . feel so weak . . .”_

_“Get out of there! I’m coming now. I’m coming to get you. Don’t fight, don’t waste your spiritual energy.”_

_“It’ll take too long. My worshippers are dying. I can’t leave them. I’ll get out of the city. I’ll draw the ghosts away. . . It’ll be safer. . .”_

_“Don’t go anywhere. Wait for me. If you love me, wait for me.”_

“Yibo?”

He’s in a dark room holding a stuffed doll. “Hm?”

Xiao Zhan is there, alive, awakened. He sits half-clothed on the tidy, toy-free bed. “What’re you thinking about?”

Yibo smirks as he tucks the stuffed toy safely in the closet. “The time I tied myself up to that chair and watched a machine fuck you.”

Blush. “ _Wow-how_.”

He aims for the bed, but pivots and slides his hands around Xiao Zhan’s waist. He presses a kiss to the man’s neck. “Don’t act so coy. It was your idea, pervert.”

“Someone was reading porn to me. Porn about us. . .“

“Mo Dao Zu Shi is not porn and it’s not _about us_. You are not Wei WuXian. Say the word and I will read you _actual_ porn about us and it will be filthy. I have loads of it on my phone.”

“That’s very sweet, Lao Wang, but doesn’t it feel like. . . I don’t know, like Chen Qing Ling was one of our past lives? I know it’s fiction, obviously, but it sits in my brain the same as our past lives. None of my other dramas do that. Does that make sense?”

Yes. “No. That’s dumb. You’re dumb.”

“Shut up.”

“Hm?” Yibo palms the bulge still contained in the magical leathers. “What did you say?”

Xiao Zhan drops his forehead to Yibo’s shoulder and moans. “ . . . Shut up. Fuck me.”

“I would, but I can’t get the image of you getting wrecked by that massive dildo out of my head.” A couple rough strokes and Yibo backs away, smirking. “Maybe I won’t touch you at all tonight, Zhan-ge? _I_ already got what I wanted.”

He’s teasing, stroking Xiao Zhan’s anticipation kink, but he’s not lying about the image searing his brain. When he looks over at that bed, all neatly made with military corners, all he can imagine is the man he’s adored for almost two thousand years spread out on his stomach with his hips propped up on a pillow, cock trapped in a stroker, with a twelve-inch silicone dildo jackhammering into him from behind.

Over the lifetimes, Yibo has raised children, armies, and tense moral objections in court with this man; he’s written bad teenage poetry and saccharine songs to this face; he’s stood in awe of this man’s mind and in reverence of his kind heart. He’s killed for him, died for him, lived modestly for him, and Xiao Zhan has done the same. There are thousands of movies worth of memories. 

But the image of Xiao Zhan mindlessly babbling and begging with a face full of tears being fucked both ways within an inch of his sanity lives in Yibo’s head rent free. Recalling the thrill of upping the intensity on the remote control despite Xiao Zhan’s protests makes his dick twitch even now. He can almost feel the rhythm of the machine in his own body, remembering how it helplessly rocked Xiao Zhan forward and back, sometimes synchronised with Yibo’s own fleshlight. He can still hear the sound of the whirring motor and the tacky squelch as the toy tried to withdraw from that slick cavity. He can definitely still feel the silk ties wrapped around his waist and throat to keep him locked to that chair.

It was filthy and hot and cathartic and they both needed what they got that night after those broken weeks.

Of course, the bubble burst. Xiao Zhan realised the window was open and they’d been hollering one another’s names out into the streets of Beijing. Yibo nearly hung himself trying to escape from his bindings to close the window. Not being in a logical frame of mind, he didn’t think to turn off the machine.

Xiao Zhan, in a similarly brainless state, went for the window as well but couldn’t disentangle himself. Instead, he knocked the machine onto the floor, breaking the phallus adapter, and tumbled off the bed with the dildo completely stuffed in his ass.

Yibo looked over after shutting the window and saw him sprawled on the rug, the machine still whirring impotently on the floor beside him. The only sign of the dildo was the bulge in Xiao Zhan’s abdomen. They both lost their minds with horny panic.

Xiao Zhan managed to get it out, no thanks to the internet or the rubber tongs Yibo fetched from the kitchen.

More importantly, it was punctuation (an interrobang, maybe‽) to the darkest part of a dark year. It wasn’t blue skies after that, but most of the storms were followed by sunshowers.

That feels like a hundred years ago from this moment. Funny how time works when you’re holding almost two thousand years in your palm.

Yibo fully expects Xiao Zhan to chase him across the room. He is disappointed.

“Fine. I’ll just get myself off and go to sleep then.” The god of inspiration sighs, sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his boots as though he’s come home from a long day at work. 

“Like hell.” Yibo grabs Xiao Zhan by the hamstring and flips him backwards onto the bed, while simultaneously pulling power from his world for a transformation. As Xiao Zhan hits the bed, the leather pants disappear and give way to simple white linen underclothes, rustic and handstitched. His hair tumbles out into wispy fringe and a messy bun held by a delicate sandstone ornament. There’s dust across his cheeks and his nose is a little sunburned.

This was how he looked their very first time, eighteen hundred years ago. That little inn in Chang’an.

Xiao Zhan blinks and grins, patting at his new vestments and hair. “Ah Lao Wang, you’re so nostalgic.”

Yibo kneels on the bed and straddles Xiao Zhan, staring down at him. Xiao Zhan stretches out his arms above his head, preening, steeping in anticipation. Even though he’s already leaking through the thin fabric, and sweat beads on his forehead and chest, he doesn’t reach for Yibo, doesn’t whine, doesn’t touch himself. He wallows in expectation.

With the least amount of skin contact possible, Yibo fists the linen trousers and pulls them down his hips, tucking the waistband just below Xiao Zhan’s balls. Xiao Zhan’s balls are flushed and drawn, his cock resting against his thigh. It twitches and swells, angle shifting.

Still, Yibo doesn’t do anything but look.

Xiao Zhan throws his head back, whimpering Yibo’s name, bucking up lightly but finding no resistance. Yibo clenches his fists at his side so he doesn’t give in.

Sometimes, the best foreplay is nothing but a loaded stare. Left to his own devices, this man will lather himself into a frenzy picturing what Yibo’s going to do and think himself off.

That’s what’s happening now. Xiao Zhan’s flush has spread from his cheeks down his chest, his nipples are peaked, and he’s panting softly. His cock twitches again, jerks, still swelling, curving toward his abdomen. They’ve done this so many different ways over their lifetimes – he has a vast bank from which to draw his fantasies while the anticipation builds. And the god of inspiration is practically vibrating with the intensity of his imagination, his skin pebbled gooseflesh, the hair on his arms standing on end.

Yibo’s hard again just from watching this.

He hovers his hand over Xiao Zhan’s stomach, wistful for the beautiful treasure trail those villains at Wajijiwa made him laser off. “Zhan-ge, calm down.” His fingers are millimetres from Xiao Zhan’s hip bone.

“Ah.” He nods, presses his lips together. But he’s not calm. He suddenly winces and his cock spasms, bobbing above his navel, flickering through a dry orgasm. Yibo sits back on Xiao Zhan’s thighs, watching his partner with wonder.

“So. . .What am I even doing here?” He tries to sound angry.

Xiao Zhan sees through it right away. “It’s all you, baby. You do this to me.”

“Yeah, but which me?”

“The . . . the one who used to stick needles in me.”

The _doctor_. This is not the first time this lifetime he’s caught Xiao Zhan fantasizing about the Ming-dynasty physician. In his quest to create the perfect aphrodisiac for the randy local prefect, the illustrious doctor ‘experimented’ on the young artist he commissioned to do anatomy study drawings. Truly, they did some weird, kinky shit that life. 

“You’re never getting acupuncture again.” Yibo lightly drifts the back of his hand so it rustles only the longest pubic curls.

Xiao Zhan shivers and closes his eyes. There’s a microshift in the energy of the room and Yibo puts an end to this, flipping Xiao Zhan onto his stomach and holding him there, one hand between his shoulder blades, the other petting his hair to bring him back to earth. The god of inspiration lies there, panting softly.

“What was that today?” Yibo asks, softly.

“What?” Xiao Zhan’s voice is muffled.

“The motorcycle thing. The illusion.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?”

Xiao Zhan’s shoulders twitch, wanting to shrug. “I. . .I don’t know. I think I’m just tired of being a pariah. Of hiding. But I’m also kind of tired of being a celebrity too. I want to be looked at, but I don’t want to be seen. Ai, I’m not sure it makes sense.”

It doesn’t. “Sure. I get it.” Yibo can only manage white lies when they serve to take care of this person.

Yibo drifts his hand up and down Xiao Zhan’s back. His index finger bumps along the pearl strand of Xiao Zhan’s spine, circles the dimples of Venus. He palms Xiao Zhan’s ass waiting for the god’s breath to regulate. 

When he’s satisfied Xiao Zhan’s not going to blow his load, Yibo plants a line of kisses along the swell of that ass before parting the cheeks and taking a perfunctory lap at the rosy pucker at the centre.

The very first time he did this, they were in Chang’an, drunkenly making up after a stupid fight. Xiao Zhan, wearing similar linen underclothes and sandstone hair ornament, was face down on the ta bed, still damp from his bath, legs splayed wildly. He cursed and moaned as Yibo held his hands behind his back and ate him out, kissing and sucking at the swollen bud before giving him a rough tongue fucking. After that, he stuffed two fingers down Xiao Zhan’s hole and milked him until he fell apart and apologised for the fight.

Tonight, Yibo’s not feeling _that_ charitable. They’re hardly courting: he doesn’t need to impress this bastard.

He comes up for air. “Zhan-ge?”

“Yeah?” the answer is breathy. Xiao Zhan glances at him over his shoulder, his face red and sweaty.

“Lube.”

“You know it’s in the bedside . . .oh.” He beams, laughing. “ _Right_.”

Yibo slides a couple fingers inside Xiao Zhan, lazily teasing that sensitive spot while he waits. The passage begins to heat up from the ambient warmth of Xiao Zhan’s immortal core, and soon enough becomes slick and sloppy.

They can only do this today, while they have access to their old dual cultivation methods. And, goddamn, if a magically-lubed ass isn’t the most convenient thing for a hot-blooded fuck marathon after a year of chastity. 

Yibo buries his face in Xiao Zhan’s ass and takes a draught of it. The taste is instantly nostalgic. Salty like his spunk, but sweeter and milder. Like he’s kissing Xiao Zhan’s mouth and sucking his cock at the same time. He can taste the heavenly yang energy suffused throughout: it glitters on his tongue.

He leans back and strokes himself a few times, smearing that tingling slick down his shaft, watching the love of his life resume his anticipation spiral, cultivated discharge glistening around the rim of his hole, dribbling down to coat the light down on his sack.

Xiao Zhan turns over, wiping the sweat from his forehead, his wispy fringe plastered to his brow and cheeks in clumps. He looks just like he did that first time, back when he was mortal. _Truly_ mortal.

“Is everything okay?”

Yibo replies by grabbing him by the feet and yanking him down the bed and into his lap. They share a bruising kiss, tongues warring, teeth clashing, while they claw and grab at one another. Xiao Zhan manages to snag his forearms in a vice and uses it to leverage himself on top, pushing Yibo onto his back, his arms dangling off the bottom of the bed. Xiao Zhan jerks them together, his eyes dark and glittering with contest. And Yibo wants this so bad, but not now. The ancient part of him needs what it needs.

He gives his shadow mass and it knocks Xiao Zhan prone and holds him down while Yibo rights himself. Hooking his arms under Xiao Zhan’s knees, Yibo hoists him up and thrusts half-way in to that tight, slick heat with one brutal shove.

Xiao Zhan arches back, mouth open in a silent cry. Then he stares up at Yibo accusingly.

“ _Ow_!”

Such a liar.

“Shut _up_ ,” Yibo sneers, holding back a gremlin smile with all his might. “. . . You’re not as tight as you think you are, old man.”

Scoville: ghost pepper. “Wang Yi _bo_ , be kinder! ”

He cackles and kisses the knee hooked over his elbow. “Xiao Zhan, you’re a fucking god. I’ve shoved my sword through your stomach with less prep and caught less crap. I think you’re becoming a little spoiled.” Nevertheless, he gives a moment to acclimate before pushing in deeper, breathing through the pressure until his balls nestle against the plump curve of Xiao Zhan’s ass.

“I think _you’re_ spoiled,” Xiao Zhan snipes, breathlessly. “Maybe I should leave for a lifetime and remind you how good you have it?” His smug smile turns into a wince when Yibo bucks into him in retaliation. He throws back his head and curses as Yibo leans forward to lay between his legs, folding him in half, calves still dangling over Yibo’s elbows.

Yibo murmurs against his ear. “Try it. I’ll find you. I won you. You’re mine.”

They kiss: slow and loving and filthy.

Xiao Zhan whispers his true name. “Break me.”

First, Yibo fucks him like they’re eighteen-year-old Wuyue soldiers sneaking away from their battalion to finally seize a moment alone together. It’s hurried, messy and rough and only takes a couple minutes for both of them to orgasm, Xiao Zhan releasing into Yibo’s hand and Yibo releasing deep inside Xiao Zhan. They lie together panting, pleasure washing over them like the waves of the bay at Xifu.

The second time is more leisurely, as though they are spending an evening in the harem away from prying eyes of court. They spoon, and Yibo fucks into him, slow and deep as they kiss languidly, their fingers entwined. He toys with dark, sensitive nipples and sucks bruises along those wheaten shoulders. Xiao Zhan comes untouched, as he so often did for the crown prince who lavished so much attention on him and so little on his wives.

Their third time happens in the bathroom when Xiao Zhan goes for a glass of water and Yibo for a leak and they end up making out in the dry bathtub, grinding and jerking each other off. It reminds them both of the lifetime they met at the bath house. Xiao Zhan was the spoiled son of a rich merchant meant to be marrying his way into the gentry. Instead, he ran away with the pool boy.

The fourth time, Xiao Zhan rides Yibo and, unlike a year ago, his movements are confident, strong, like a man skilled at horsemanship. Like a western khan riding his beloved horse master. Xiao Zhan ties Yibo’s hands above his head and takes his pleasure, first shallow and teasing, then spiking himself with abandon, vigorous and manic. He leans back against Yibo’s knees and makes a show of it, strings of profanities falling from his mouth. Shamelessly, he uses their combined fluid to jerk himself to completion, painting Yibo’s abdomen with his spend.

The fifth time, the early morning traffic has already started. They’re tangled in the sheets, in each other. Everything is disgusting, sticky, crusty, like they’re fifteen again and getting turned on by anything with an s-curve. Neither of them give a shit. Yibo’s combing his hand through Xiao Zhan’s sweaty bangs, staring into those dull, fucked-out eyes - at the swirls of devil yin energy staining the chestnut-red irises.

“One more round.” A soft, chaste kiss.

Xiao Zhan breathes and nods. Involuntary and basic functions are about all he can manage now he’s so deeply infected by Yibo’s power.

Part of Yibo, the human part, hates him in this state, seeing how empty he is.

But the darker, ancient part of him, won’t be satisfied until his prey is completely consumed.

Their bodies slip in together easily - Xiao Zhan is ruined past recognition back there. Is it overkill – it feels like overkill – but Yibo needs this to complete his ritual.

He holds Xiao Zhan down and kisses him as he burrows deeper and deeper like a parasite. He pours his dark energy down the god of inspiration’s throat like wine, and fucks it into him, every buck of his hips spurting more corruption into Xiao Zhan’s once-blinding gold centre. He whispers ancient spells like prayers and watches as the contamination overtakes those beautiful irises, his consciousness infusing Xiao Zhan’s blood stream, his every nerve. 

He feels Xiao Zhan’s rising pleasure mirrored in himself and feeds it back, so they are a loop of fucking and being fucked. He pushes them both beyond themselves – beyond reason, beyond language, beyond human instinct.

Their bodies, souls, fuse, their souls gambolling in harmony. Their bodies melt away and they are particles colliding. They are energy. Stars. They are supernovae.

They _are_.

They are collapsing together in bed, finally spent. They kiss. Yibo delicately extracts some of his energy so his beloved doesn’t drown.

They are falling asleep in one another’s arms like lovers do.

Yibo wakes up to an empty bed. The room is still dim and washed in amber, dusk threatening the horizon,. It’s cool: the window’s open to diffuse the smell of sex saturating the room. It hasn’t done much good.

Xiao Zhan stands at the window, white robe draped around his shoulders, staring out at the Beijing streets below. Even in profile, Yibo can see some clarity’s already returned to his eyes, the devil yin energy partially exorcised. It never takes him long to purge it, which reminds Yibo that Xiao Zhan always chooses to be overtaken by it.

A slant of light crests the edge of the earth. It kisses his face. The sun always finds him. Perhaps the sun god loves him as well.

He lifts his hand as though to catch the light. And he does: three delicate motes of energy float and land in his palm.

_‘You shouldn’t be here.’_

Xiao Zhan doesn’t say this out loud – it’s a telepathic communique only perceived through heavenly dimensions, using frequencies only immortals can hear. But Xiao Zhan hasn’t finished sublimating Yibo’s essence. His mind is still Yibo’s to know.

‘Heaven needs to know your answer, Lord.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t have an answer yet. I need more time.’

‘But Lord, if you require support from the heavenly marshals, we’ll need time to organise this.’

‘I won’t need anything like that.’

‘But if you do –‘

‘I won’t.’ Xiao Zhan’s tone is sharp. ‘Please just give me some time to figure this out.’

‘Of course. But Lord. . . your light is dingy. Has he attacked you?’

‘ _No_.’

‘But you seem weak. Your power is low. You’re compromised.’

Xiao Zhan smiles, knowingly. ‘I’m _fine_.’

‘My lord, if the demon prince attacked you now, you would be defenceless.’

‘He can’t attack me now – he’s asleep.’

‘Lord, do not underestimate him! Your heart is too kind. He is not a human today: he is a monster. Selfish and cruel. He has fooled you so many times before. He hunted you, stole you - he violated you for years. The underworld murdered you because of _him_ –‘

‘-Are you done slandering him? I’ll light some incense if I need you. You can go. ’ There’s a sharp edge to Xiao Zhan’s voice that makes Yibo shiver even though the god’s wielding this blade in his defence. Xiao Zhan’s been using this icy tone more with the mortals as well and Yibo doesn’t like it, even if it’s always delivered with a smile.

‘My lord, at least let us send you some medicine to recover your power.’

Xiao Zhan snorts. ‘Leave it if you want. I’ll just use it for the same end.’

The motes disappear back into the sun beam, and the light shifts to where it should have fallen according to middle kingdom physics.

Xiao Zhan hugs himself and leans his temple against the window. His entire demeanour shifts, the godly confidence shattering like sugar glass. Eyes closed, he takes a ragged breath before covering his mouth and silently falling apart.

Yibo shuts his eyes as Xiao Zhan rushes out of the bedroom, stumbling over the corner of the rug. Yibo’s heightened demonic hearing catches the bathroom door lock, the knock of bony knees against the porcelain floor, and a sob that makes his blood run cold.

What the fucking hell is going on?

Xiao Zhan is gone for five minutes before climbing into bed, nestling up against Yibo’s back, draping an arm around his waist. The man is still cold, still too affected by Yibo’s power to be his usual walking furnace.

“Where were you?” Yibo doesn’t recognise his voice it sounds so childish and lost.

“Just bathroom. Sorry to wake you. Go back to sleep – it’s still so early.” He sniffs and kisses Yibo’s shoulder. “Demon Lord, you stink”

Soon his breath grows soft and rhythmic, his body readily accepting sleep to recover his power.

They weren’t wrong, the gossipy little motes.

Well, they were wrong in thinking he’d hurt Xiao Zhan now. But they weren’t wrong about what he’s done.

He’s been human for so many lifetimes, but his spirit wasn’t born human. He’s not an immortal, not a god: he’s not human-plus. He is a demon prince, born from primordiality, from beasts, from dark matter and the music written before language.

His desire is not the same as a human’s and it wars with the morality he’s developed over the years. For lifetimes he suppressed his desire, horrified by how it would be seen through human eyes, both Xiao Zhan’s and his own.

Before the curse, he never thought of this. He wasn’t human: why should he be subject to the arbitrary laws of human morality? Who were humans to dictate the rules of the underworld? When all the humans were dead he would still be here, empty world and all, and so too would his desires.

Xiao Zhan understands his needs. He never denies Yibo’s desire to subsume and consume him in his power, to wrap him up like a fly in a spider webbing, to plant a parasite in his brain and control him completely.

Absolute blinding trust. This taps into the desires of the deepest human part of Yibo.

But they didn’t always share this trust. He nearly lost it forever.

*^*

“How do you know what I was like as a human?”

Usually in his world, Yibo was in control. But that day in the middle of that wasteland, with the god of inspiration finally in his arms after a century of hostile courtship, he slipped.

Yibo’s heart thrummed. “I- I saw you.”

“Where would you see me?” Xiao Zhan tilted his head.

“Obviously on the battlefield.” He coughed. “You were a commoner who ascended – you think there wasn’t an audience?”

Xiao Zhan was still. “Are you . . . trying to lie?”

Yibo huffed: he thought he was doing a pretty good job of it, actually. “No. I was there. I saw you ascend. I saw the petals swirl around you. Your horse was wheezing on the ground – you rode it to death drawing the army away from the crown prince. There were bolts and bolts of red silk brocade around you. You unfurled the fabric behind as you galloped through the morning fog so the enemy thought you were the retinue flying the banners –“

“-Why do you sound nervous then?”

He smirked, but undermined his swagger by swallowing hard. “Why would I be nervous?”

Xiao Zhan pushed back half of his veil. “Demon Lord, you can touch me so intimately but you can’t even speak the truth?”

Yibo’s jaw tightened. It was so hard to keep himself from blurting it all out. He wanted to, but he wasn’t ready. _They_ weren’t ready. It was too confusing. It would muddy things. He had to be patient.

“I saw you a few other times too.”

Okay, fuck patience: apparently he was doing this.

“What? When? Where?”

“Other battles. And I saw you in Jiangzhou. Yiling. Xiakou with your companions. You bought everyone plums and roasted walnuts after defeating a cannibalistic cultivation sect since none of you would touch meat for a month. Uh. . .Baqiu, I can’t remember what you were doing there. And. . . Chang’an. For the spring festival. You lost your pouch and sang in the street to get money enough for noodles. I. . .I brought you an orange.”

“You. . . brought me an orange?”

“And treated you to noodles.”

“Treated me . . .”

“Then we got drunk. We were kicked out of five or six wine houses for being too loud. I looked a little different.” Yibo ran a hand through his hair, turning the black and white locks to soft chestnut, wrapping them in a leather band atop his head. His paper-white skin took on colour, still fair with light tanning at the temples and nose. Those piercing cat-like green eyes with their black sworls of devil energy turned mortal: still piercing, still catlike, but deep and warm. Human.

Xiao Zhan exhaled.

Now that he was talking about it, Yibo couldn’t stop. The words spun out, rolling downhill. “We burned bamboo sticks in the street and you got in a stupid argument with a merchant. I decked him and we ran away. You yelled songs at the top of your lungs and threw up on a statue and thought it was a person. You tried to apologise to him and got angry when he didn’t accept your apology. You told me to hit him and I said I don’t hit statues and you said that you do and you used all your spiritual energy to punch a statue to death. Your knuckles were bleeding so we found an inn. We didn’t leave the inn for three days. On the -”

“-On the fourth day we hunted spirit beasts near the river,” intoned Xiao Zhan. His face was sallow and devoid of expression. “On the fifth day we scared a horse with exploding bamboo and it caused havoc in the market. On the sixth day we argued and sulked in separate corners of the inn. On the sixth night we made up and could barely walk to the shops the next day. On the seventh night. . . On the eighth night. . .On the fifteenth night. . .”

“-You were so fucking beautiful that ni-”

“-On the sixteenth morning you were gone. I looked for you for a month and thought you were dead.”

It was Yibo’s turn to stay quiet.

“But you weren’t,” Xiao Zhan said with a queer laugh and a shrug. “You were here. Because you’re a monster.”

“I was . . . called back.”

In being ‘called back’, he meant that his world was conquered in his absence by three of his rivals, who began carving it up for themselves. They siphoned off the power by destroying the souls in his care, ones meant to return to the middle realm.

“Okay.” Xiao Zhan forced a smile, his eyes shimmering.

There was something wrong, but Yibo didn’t know what it was. He leaned forward to take Xiao Zhan’s hand.

The god flinched.

No – a flinch is a small movement. A knee-jerk reaction using a couple muscles. Xiao Zhan recoiled in disgust.

“How long have you been watching me?” His voice was deadly quiet.

“What?”

“You said you saw me at Jiangzhou – I left Ba when I was fourteen. So you were hunting me even then?”

“ _Hunting_ you?” Yibo snapped. “I wasn’t . . . you were a child. I saved you from that man who was going to beat you to death.”

He was simply passing through the western kingdoms en route to the great mountains, looking for cultivators to consume, when he stopped at Jiangzhou for a meal and a bath. As he passed by a large house, he heard a child crying and a man’s raised voice. Mildly curious, he glanced in the window.

A child, seven or eight, small and malnourished, dressed in soiled canvas and muslin, lay on his stomach protecting his head. The man was whipping him with bamboo strips and had been for some time considering the boy’s ribboned back. For a second, the boy lifted his eyes to the window. He was so pathetic: those overlarge prey-eyes filled with fat tears, snot coating his snivelling lips, face flush with terror and pain. The demon lord didn’t consume children as they had yet to develop their golden pellet. They were weak-willed and offered no contest. They might as well be moths fluttering around lamps. 

But the man holding the whip was a cultivator: moderately powerful with a gleaming core.

The child had long passed out when the demon lord sliced open the man’s belly and consumed his power. In a moment of magnanimity, he transferred energy into the boy to speed his healing and left him a sword so he could learn how to defend himself.

He saved the miserable child’s life.

Someone else didn’t see it that way.

“You . . .” Xiao Zhan laughed, his face lighting up in caustic surprise. “ _You_ killed him? You killed. . . _Demon Lord_ , that man was my venerated teacher! He could do whatever he wanted with me. You _saved_ me? They blamed me for his death and imprisoned me for four years. They caught me with the murder tool and everything. They only released me so they could drag me out of my homeland to be arrow fodder in their wars.”

Yibo didn’t know that – time moved differently in the underworld than the middle kingdom. Whenever he went to the mortal realm to check on Xiao Zhan, he’d aged so much, his life changed. He couldn’t keep up with it. Truly, he was just happy that this mortal, whose gentle eyes and heart-breaking smile somehow kept his attention, was alive and gaining strength, prestige, and following a powerful cultivation path.

At some point, the boy might even be strong enough for Yibo to consume.

Thinking back, he probably wouldn’t have consumed Xiao Zhan. 

Yibo reached out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –“

“What else did you do? How else did you interfere with my life?”

He didn’t dare say anything else.

“You said Baqiu. Why were you watching me in Hanchang?”

“I wasn’t ‘watching’ you. . .”

“I remember Baqiu – I only went there once. My group met a Bai Ze on the shores of Dongting. That strange ox creature told each of my companions what components they needed to best further their cultivation. But when it got to me, it said. . .it just said that I was going to suffer for many lifetimes and that I would end this life without knowing the touch of another human being.

“So when we arrived at the inn in Baqiu, my companions bought me a woman. She was beautiful and worldly and I got very drunk so I could sleep with her. Is any of this jogging your memory?”

Yibo didn’t need his memory jogged. He recalled every moment of it:

“I blacked out. And when I woke up, she was dead on the floor beside my bed. Her neck was broken. The authorities pursued us out of town. They dogged us for a week.”

“I did it.”

Xiao Zhan laughed, incredulous. “Not even going to try to deny it!”

“Idiot. You were unconscious. She was a shadow cultivator, and her sect planned to attack your group on your way out of town for your spiritual tools. They meant to harvest your bodies and conduct a ritual for one of my rivals.”

“So you killed her.”

“I killed the entire sect.” Yibo consumed three of them, but they were weak and their cultivation was dingy. The rest were unceremoniously dispatched.

“How many.”

“Sixty. Give or take.”

The god didn’t even flinch. He simply closed his eyes and nodded.

“Anything more?”

“ _No_.”

“Except you abandoning me in Chang’an.”

“I didn’t abandon you. I came back. It’s just –“

“When? I looked for you for month! I looked everywhere for you and. . .and I thought about you – where you were, how you were, what you were doing – for the rest of my life until I died. Alone.” Xiao Zhan closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around himself. “The Bai Ze. He was right. I. . . have never been with a human.”

That confirmed something Yibo suspected. Although there were many captivated parties over the years, the cultivator was oblivious to the attention, inadvertently flirting with everything that moved. And Xiao Zhan never sought out what he truly wanted, because he was a romantic who had to get dead drunk to even think of sleeping with a prostitute.

This prince of the underworld just wanted to give Xiao Zhan a damn orange for the spring festival.

In all the times he’d checked in on the mortal, he’d never interacted directly. Then he gave him an orange and bowl of overcooked noodles and they ended up in bed together for two weeks.

By the time Yibo got back to the middle kingdom after rallying against his enemies, Xiao Zhan was on the battlefield bathed in light.

“Why me?”

“What?” Yibo wasn’t sure he heard Xiao Zhan- his voice was so small.

The god opened his eyes and his eyelashes were dark and wet, his sclera blazing with heavenly yang light. “Why _me_? Why would you decide: _that_. _That_ pathetic child. That’s the one I’m going to torture for the rest of his life and beyond.”

_No._

“I’m going to destroy his childhood and take away his homeland. I’m going to dog his every step and wreak disaster wherever he goes. And then I’m going to seduce him and poison his mind to the thought of loving anyone else.”

“That’s not what happened!”

“And then, when he ascends, I’ll torment him even more. I’ll vandalise his temples. I’ll menace his worshippers. I’ll play with him like a lion toys with a field mouse.”

Yibo couldn’t breathe.

“But of course you would. You’re a . . .”

The earth began to quake and Yibo wasn’t controlling it. Xiao Zhan’s tears finally spilled after threatening to for so long. But they never fell: instead they formed into perfect spheres and hung suspended in the air as the gleaming yang energies spiralling around Xiao Zhan turned a sickly green.

“That’s not what happened!” Yibo roared. “You don’t understand. I chose you. I love you.”

“What does love even mean to you? You’re an indiscriminate killer. You murdered my teacher. You butchered sixty cultivators. You’ve killed my followers at whim.”

“But you’re _you_! They’re _them_. They’re just normal humans!”

“ _I_ was just a human!” Xiao Zhan screamed. Green light wrapped around him, beaming out from his mouth, his nostrils, the pores of his skin. “I was only ever just a normal human! I am no better than any other human!”

The light suddenly collapsed into swirling darkness. His eyes became obsidian, and black ooze poured out from the corners of his mouth and nostrils like oil. “You’ve never been a human. You don’t know.”

His qi sparked. 

A demon lord stood, helpless, in his toxic wasteland as the only human he ever cared for deviated in fire.

Because he knew little about living humans, the demon lord had no idea that his world could be fatal to them, even after ascension. He had no idea that, having drained Xiao Zhan’s power through their innocent play, this person he loved was unsuspectingly replenishing his lifeforce with poison.

Worse still, because he was never human, he didn’t understand that he had completely shattered his human’s delicate heart. He didn't understand _how_ he had or _why_. He understood nothing at all.


	5. Fanart Break

Fan art. Safe for work. Scroll down to view.

Rendered in Clip Studio Paint. Please do not repost. This fanart should not appear in full anywhere but this page.

[Noon on Bird App](https://twitter.com/Noon92361356)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This art was suggested by loosegguk who wanted to see a rendering of the immortal forms. Demon!Yeebs can pretty much transform at will in his world, so in my mind he changes up his appearance a lot, but here is one iteration.
> 
> I am also working on another piece of art as suggested by inconstence and will embed that in the appropriate chapter when it is done. If you have suggestions for illustrations, pop them in a comment or visit me on twitter. ☺️
> 
> Writing update schedule: I will be posting two new chapters this weekend!

**Author's Note:**

> I truly have the loveliest readers. Thank you for the support and thoughtful comments. I'm so grateful as I'm not a fast writer and get demoralised very easily. Thank you for giving this odd story a chance. 
> 
> No beta - all the many mistakes are my own.


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